03/07/2023 - Vincent Perez’s fourth feature is a period piece about duelling and honour, well crafted at key moments, but still falling short of its full potential

The history of duelling in France spanned 1,000 years and was only completely abandoned after World War II. For half of that time, armed duels were strictly illegal, but were still practised as a method of settling disputes, or seeking justice or revenge. The key matter that duels usually revolved around, and maybe the most misused term in the history of duelling, was honour, a “man’s thing” that had to be preserved or restored at all costs.

For his fourth feature as a director, Vincent Perez takes us back to Paris in 1887, a time and place where duels were still considered a matter of honour between men, despite being prohibited by law. They were judged by tribunals that imposed the rules and were accepted as a sort of badly kept secret. Edge of the Blade [+see also:
interview: Vincent Perez
film profile] premiered at Film Fest Munich just one day before playing in Karlovy Vary’s Horizons section.

Our protagonist, Clément Lacaze (the prolific Roschdy Zem), is a sword master and instructor at a fencing school. When his nephew Adrien (Damien Bonnard) is challenged to a duel with the more experienced Colonel Berchère, Lacaze does his best to change Adrien’s mind about duelling, and then to prepare him for the fencing match. At the same time, the proto-feminist Marie-Rose Astié de Valsayre (Doria Tillier) wages her own battle for a change to societal norms, from allowing women to wear trousers and take part in fencing to greater things like voting rights and equal wages. By doing so, she attracts the attention of the politically connected journalist Témoin Massat (Nicolas Gaspar), who tarnishes her reputation in his texts, and so she tries to challenge him to a duel. What ensues is a chain of clashes in different forms, with épées, pistols, and even one in the military style, on horseback and with sabres.

The international English-language title is a tad generic, but the original French one, Une affaire d’honneur, is actually more suitable, since the film deals with the concept of honour in different ways, even daring to point out that it is not just a man’s affair, but also a woman’s. As he demonstrated with his previous works as a filmmaker, Perez is more than capable of finding important topics, connecting them to a story and telling it from a fresh angle. His strong point is painting an in-depth portrait of a certain period of time and the different societal forces at work in influencing it. So, at least thematically, Edge of the Blade is an interesting affair.

However, Perez is not a natural-born filmmaker, so here, he minimises the risk. His directing style is safe and a little bland, although the duels, as the key scenes in the film, have been staged and executed masterfully, thanks to Lucie Badinaud’s cinematography and Sylvie Lager’s impeccable editing. On the other hand, the script by Perez and his spouse and frequent collaborator Karine Silla seems like an adaptation of a literary work (even if it is not), so the actors have to make do with slightly rigid dialogues, and their characters are never developed enough to be imaginable in the real world. The period details in Jean Philippe Moreaux’s production design elevate the overall appeal of the film, although the quasi-realistic dim lighting tends to make some of the indoor scenes quite murky. In the end, Edge of the Blade is a decent, watchable effort, although it could have been a bit more than that.

Edge of the Blade is a French production by Gaumont, which also handles the sales and the national distribution.