In this brilliant romantic tragedy a solid woman Sara (Juliette Binoche) is torn between her committed lover Jean (Vincent Lindon) and her wild former passion Francois (Gregoire Colin).

The film opens on Sara's idyllic seaside holiday with Jean and ends with her left alone, a victim of her own emotions, her lover's selfishness and - as if all that were not enough - mischance. A lifetime of womanly obedience ends in dashed loves and a dark solitude.

The scenes of intimacy and conflict stand up to anything in Bergman. The predominantly low string score tightens the lovers' tension throughout.

As this is a Claire Denis film the romantic plot is given a political correlative. As one of Sara's radio interviewees cites Fritz Fanon, racism is a psychological problem because it is rooted in locked-in identities. So are the three central lovers. When Francois resurfaces as Jean's business partner and Sara's disaster, she tries to negotiate between her two lovers. She is ultimately betrayed by one man and her own compulsiveness.

The political theme also involves 15-year-old Marcus, Jean's black son from his marriage to a Martinique woman. Jean tries to save the despairing teen from letting himself be defined by the dominant white society and resigned to servitude. That's Sara's struggle too. The epilogue is a pallid, lifeless scene of Jean and Marcus at a juvenile rugby practice, their spirit lost.

While the characters are interesting and the premise is solid, the overexposition in the script all throughout makes you want to jump off the balcony as it renders something with a lot of potential into a student-level film, with brilliant actors left to deliver debutant dialogue. It's lazy, preachy, pretentious and simply put lacks tension all throughout, which for any movie but especially a drama is deadly.

At the end of the day, the only character worth caring here is Jean, thanks to Vincent Lindon's delivery, but even then it's not even clear what he really wants. Francois wants Sara, Sara wants who knows what, Jean seems to want to be a good parent yet doesn't do much for it. Weak objectives which lead to a futile, slow and boring progression.

I wish I could get the time wasted watching this back.

Not going to claim this is the best one by Denis, but it is still a good go by the 70-plus French stalwart. If anyone else had made a movie out of the Angot novel, it would not be anywhere near as good. Denis gets terrific work out of the troupers Lindon and Binoche, and finds real depth in material, that maybe is not all that deep actually.

Next time around, she brings to the screen one of the late novels by the wonderful American writer, Denis Johnson. No relation, of course.