The sentimental crossings of the Binoche-Lindon couple, the return of Diabolik, Giallini prince of Rome and 7 other films not to be missed at the cinema or in streaming

You can’t be sure of anything if even a solid, auto-immune pair gives way like the one formed by fifty-year-olds Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon). She is a radio journalist, very active on human rights. He is a former rugby player, now unemployed, with a few years in prison behind him and a son born from the union with a black woman. The two have been together for some time, but are in perfect harmony in their bohemian penthouse overlooking the rooftops of Paris. They feel the need for each otherthey support each other, they tell each other everything and they go great in bed.
True love, one would say, that nothing can question, resistant to storms and temptations. Instead, shortly after a happy weekend at the beach, François (Grgoire Colin) falls back into their existence, more than a family friend. The man was Sara’s lover and friend of Jean, with whom he was a business partner. The pair becomes a triangle, and not a perfect one. The balance breaks down: Sara is torn apart, divided, confused. What was once her strength, her ability to chase emotions, becomes her Achilles heel. The bond with Jean is solid until it is fulfilling, total, a cloudless sky. It falls apart when the storm arrives.
François seems to be able to give Sara a breath of youth, a sentimental upgrade for which it is worth losing oneself, abandoning oneself to a dimension in which inner urgencies go hand in hand with the renewal of desire. Deserved Silver Bear in Berlin, Sentimental crossings (Avec amour et acharnement the original title) there returns a Claire Denis to the best of form, extraordinary explorer of a world of impulses, sighs, leaps and restraints thanks also to the novel A tournant de la vie by Christine Angot (2018), who co-wrote the screenplay with the director.
The psychodrama, the rift that takes place between Sara and Jean sets the extremes of the new menage trois, a classic French redesigned by the global crisis and the long pandemic stop. Binoche, you know, the favorite actress of Claire Denis (third film together after the memorable Chocolate And Love according to Isabelle). And you understand why: same harmony, same emotional rhythm, same reactions in the face of emergencies of the heart. Lindon, confirming himself as the most concentrated actor in French cinema, a dismayed Jean, a complacent alpha male who, detached from his Sara, risks spinning.

SENTIMENTAL CROSSINGS by Claire Denis
(France, 2022, duration 116′)
Starring Juliette Binoche, Grgoire Colin, Vincent Lindon, Mati Diop, Bulle Ogier
Rating: *** out of 5
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