Last night I finally watched Claire Denis‘s Both Sides of the Blade (Avec amour et acharnement).

Written by Denis and Christine Angot, it’s basically about a marriage between a long-of-tooth Parisian couple — Juliette Binoche‘s “Sara” and Vincent Lindon‘s “Jean” — coming apart at the seams because of wifey’s decision to start fucking an ex-boyfriend (Gregoire Colin‘s “Francois”).

It’s Jean’s fault, in a way, for going into an athletic-talent-spotting business with Francois. Jean knows Francois and Sara’s romantic history, but as an ex-con he’s looking to build his life up again with a sport-related enterprise.

Anyway, Jean smells the Sara-Francois vibe before long, Sara lies to Jean with absolute conviction, and eventually it all blows the hell up.

The weird part is that Francois is significantly younger (Colin was born in ’75) than Sara, who looks late 50ish (as Binoche is). And Jean is in his early ’60s (as Lindon is). If you ask me Binoche and Lindon are only a few years away from being too old for this shit.

Plus we realize toward the end that Francois is selfish and a bit coarse (during his first assignation with Sara he suddenly wants anal without lube or foreplay). This tells us that Sara is foolish — a bad judge of character — on top of being a lying infidel.

There’s also a pointless, credibility-straining subplot about Jean having an alienated black son named Marcus (Issa Perica), which I completely ignored. One, the Marcus subplot was obviously inserted to satisfy the woke thing. And two, Jean and Marcus don’t resemble each other in the slightest. Complete bullshit.

Both Sides of the Blade isn’t half bad, but all it leaves you with is “dudes, don’t marry a conniving liar.”