A Brilliant Conflict

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The Girl Cut in Two was one of the great Claude Chabrol's final films in an astonishing career that span 58 years before his death in 2010. The former Cahiers du Cinema journalist was famously a huge fan of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, writing about the Master of Suspense at length for the magazine before Chabrol's own work weaved together Hitchcock's sublime blend of melodrama and tension with Chabrol's own French New Wave (his debut Le Beau Serge is widely considered the first). This 2007 effort does much of the same, but the emphasis is more on the melodrama for the main bulk of the film and it lacks the New Wave edge of his early, greater works.Pretty young weather-girl Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier) catches the eye of the rich and famous author Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) when the latter is interviewed at the TV station she works for. Charles performs a book signing at Gabrielle's mother's book store, where he is confronted by the filthy-rich heir to a pharmaceutical company, Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), while Charles invites Gabrielle to accompany him to an auction. The clearly unhinged Paul also lusts after Gabrielle, and begins an aggressive pursuit of her while she is off falling in love with the arrogant and pretentious (and married) Charles.Sagnier is particularly lovely as a character who may have come across as spoiled and selfish if not handled quite so delicately. There are fewer things quite as uncomfortable to watch than a nice girl caught up in a love triangle with two absolute arseholes, and Berleand and Magimel certainly bring a complexity, and even flashes of sympathy, to their loathsome man-children. Gabrielle is pulled back and forth between the two - the metaphor of the title also plays out almost literally in a slightly surreal final scene - and this goes on for quite a while. It gradually builds up to the inevitable and the film begins to feel more juicy, however by the time this happens there aren't quite enough minutes remaining to fully explore its full potential. Certainly engaging but one of the French auteurs lesser works.

The film is well-done but I have issues with the script. Anyway, the plot unfolds when an older successful famous author, Charles Saint Denis, meets a weather girl at the Lyon TV station. He's married to a saint Dona and lives in the country most of the time. He also has an apartment in town. He is smitten by the blonde young weather girl, Gabrielle. Her mother is a book seller with a shop in town and they meet again. Still, he's taken with her and his wife's away so he'll play. Poor Gabrielle, she's stuck in the middle. She is in a dead end romance with the married author and courted by Paul Gaudens, a drunken party animal and heir to the Gaudens family fortune. His father was a successful chemist and his mother is the socialite. Paul has secrets in his past that his family have fought to protect him from. Anyway, this film is about Gabrielle's relationship with both men. The ending isn't one that I see coming and takes the film into another direction. I think Gabrielle was playing with fire with both men. Charles was married to Dona and Paul was unstable. Gabrielle wanted happiness and love but was used and mistreated.

Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier) is blonde, friendly, smart but not shrewd or sophisticated. She's a weather presenter on a local television station. Her mother manages a bookstore. Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) is a famous man of letters, winner of the Prix Goncourt. He's three decades her senior, wealthy, charming, aging and a rake. His wife loves him. Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel) is spoiled, arrogant, the young heir to the Gaudens chemical millions and seems to need a keeper to smooth over the trouble he causes for others and himself. His father is dead. His mother is elegant and icy. Both men become fixated on Gabrielle. Saint-Dennis, because she gives him youth and sex, because she is a malleable bit of female clay he can instruct in the worldly ways of sexual dissolution. Gaudens, because she doesn't fall over for him, yet treats him as the attractive man he thinks himself to be. Both men detest each other. Both would be fine catches for any ambitious young woman. Please note that elements of the plot are discussed.. Gabrielle falls in love with Saint-Denis, and is even willing to climb the carved, wooden, circular staircase with him in the elegant rake's club he takes her to, introducing her to his fellow aging, wealthy libertines. Charles wants her, has her, then doesn't want the entanglements, then wants her, then doesn't want the bother of leaving his wife, then wants her. Paul wants her, is furious with Charles for having her, wants her, wants her, wants her. And Gabrielle? The best description of her situation comes from Roger Ebert: "The three central characters are in an emotional fencing match, and Gabrielle lacks a mask." That she survives, and don't ask about the other two, makes a fine story that has not a trace of melodrama. We see what's going on, how the characters change, how Gabrielle changes, with all the usual impending unease that Claude Chabrol brings to his films. We know Gabrielle's situation cannot continue, but Chabrol keeps us guessing about his intentions and her fate. Towards the end, I was almost sure we were going to have one of those sad and ambiguous endings that usually drive me crazy. Then Chabrol wraps up his story about Gabrielle, the girl cut in two, with a final set-up that is amusing and satisfying, and a little surreal. Chabrol has given us a fine movie. He's 78 now, and is a wonder. For those who may be fond of Ludivine Sagnier, three movies come to mind to show her range (not to mention her body): 8 Women, where at 23 she plays a pig-tailed tomboy about 15; Swimming Pool, where a year later she plays a sex pot given to nude swims; and this one. For Francois Berleand, compare his self-assurance here with the high-ranking official Isabelle Huppert turns to sniveling impotence in Chabrol's cynical and satisfying Comedy of Power.

For years,French suspense director,Claude Chabrol has often been regarded as the Gallic Alfred Hitchcock. For this outing, he has mined the harbor of Woody Allen, and come up a wee bit short. Ludivine Sagnier plays an attractive weather girl who is torn between her affections for an older man,who is a famous writer, and a spoiled rich boy,who claims to adore her. It's up to her to decide which one she is to take up with. This film will probably be a major turn off to those who are appalled by the whole April/December affair (he's old enough to be her grandfather). It still beats watching 'High School Musical 3' (which isn't saying much). No MPAA rating,but contains some vulgar language & adult situations,which are somewhat tastefully depicted with restraint.