“Sentimental crossings”, two extraordinary actors for an intense sentimental triangle

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Two of the greatest interpreters of French cinema in a single film: Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche share the scene in the intense “Sentimental Crossings” by Claire Denis, French director back behind the camera four years after the excellent ” High Life,” a sci-fi feature film starring Binoche herself.
In “Sentimental Crossings”, the French actress takes on the role of Sara, a woman torn between love for her current partner Jean and the memory of the great feeling she experienced in the past with François.

When the two men start working together on a new project, it will be an opportunity for Sara to meet François again and be even more uncertain about her real feelings.

Presented in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, the film was written by the director together with Christine Angot, who had already written the screenplay for “Love according to Isabelle” with her: at the heart of this new film is a painful and not easy to tell, which shows Claire Denis’s great ability to deal with human relationships with considerable depth. Over the years, the French author has signed important titles such as “Beau travail” (1999), “Cannibal Love” (2001) or ” L’intrus” (2004), always managing to bring to the screen characters of great depth, often marginalized or not understood by the surrounding society.

In “Incroci sentimentali” the story is instead more canonical, but this does not detract from the originality of a script that is followed with great attention from beginning to end.

Magnificent soundtrack

Among the most significant elements of Claire Denis’s cinema, there is undoubtedly the fundamental relationship with the Tindersticks musical group, effective in always giving added value and new ways of reading to her films. Also in this case the music (and the magnificent song over the end credits) work perfectly, giving greater intensity and expressiveness to a film that also plays a lot with words and with the interpretations of an always fit cast. of rhythm and some sequences are not very credible, but the moments of discussion between Sara and Jean are simply extraordinary and alone are worth the vision: the merit, in addition to the script, goes to the monumental performances of Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon, with this the last one who confirms himself as one of the most important actors in contemporary European cinema. It should be noted that after the presentation of this film in Berlin, which arrived in our cinemas this week, Claire Denis brought another novelty to the Cannes Film Festival a few months later “Stars at Noon”, with unfortunately decidedly more disappointing results.