Juliette Binoche plays a woman torn between two lovers, completing an intriguing love triangle made up of a cast of French cinema heavyweights.

Sara (Juliette Binoche) is a presenter on a highbrow Paris radio talk show. For 10 years she has lived with Jean (Vincent Lindon), a former sports star who has served time in prison for an unspecified offence. The third corner of the triangle is François (Grégoire Colin), Sara’s ex-lover whom she left for Jean on a passionate impulse a decade ago. Jean and Sara haven’t seen François since then, but one morning outside the studio, Sara glimpses François in the street and her old feelings are devastatingly reignited.

Both Sides of the Blade is a simmering, sensual melodrama played out in a blunt, bitterly neo-realistic fashion. Human beings can be complex and acclaimed writer-director Claire Denis’ stylistic execution - from the rapid cutting, the restless camerawork, the repeated use of tight close-ups, to the nervous strings of the orchestral score - illustrates this complexity near faultlessly.

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