Customer Reviews

A Girl Cut in Two

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

I felt the movie was just alright. It felt very slow to me. It took a while before anything remotely interesting happened. I was almost ready to give up on it. A young girl falls for an old married author. The author feeds her lines that he loves her and will leave his wife and things of this nature. The girl then starts hanging out with a young wealthy heir. She is eventually torn between the two men although it is most evident which one she prefers. I really enjoyed the ending. It didn't have a sterotypical ending. Actually, the ending is why I gave it 3 stars. I don't want to ruin it by giving it away and the ending isn't life changing or anything of that nature...I just liked it because it wasn't the typical happy ending riding off into the sunset on a white horse along the beach sort of thing.

Claude Chabrol was one of the most luminous of the lights that the Nouvelle Vague produced, gaining international attention with his psychological drama "Les Cousins" (1959), then later creating tense thrillers like "Le Boucher" (1970) and "Nada" (1974). His 2007 film "A Girl Cut in Two" ("La Fille Coupée en Deux") combines these styles to give us a strange story of emotional and sexual obssession. "One man's love is another man's lust," the tag line says, and the movie opens with images seen through a red filter and "In questa Reggia" on the soundtrack, indicating there's a dangerous story underway. It starts off safely enough, with a TV personality Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier) having an affair with a famous author (François Berléand), even though he is married and old enough to be her father, and although he sees her strictly as a sex object, escorting her to an exclusive "club". At the same time she is courted by the wealthy scion of a chemical fortune (Benoit Magimel) who at first seems remarkably immature. It is only after she marries the heir that she realizes fully he is not so much immature as perilously deranged. Aware of her relationship with the author, he starts berating and nagging his wife, finally threatening her with a gun. If this plot is beginning to sound familiar it's because it is an almost blow-by-blow retelling of the White-Nesbit-Thaw affair which shocked New York in 1906. That scandal has been presented on the screen at least twice, in 1955's "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" and 1981's "Ragtime"; and it's not at all unlikely that Chabrol as a young man saw the former movie on its original release and was quite impressed, not only with the 22-year old Joan Collins playing the title role but with Richard Fleischer's smooth direction. At any rate he has made the scandal his own, setting the story not in early twentieth-century New York but in modern-day Lyon, and re-creating the characters to be similar but not exact replications of the original personalities. So Gabrielle (having been fired from her television celebrity) doesn't end up in a red velvet swing but being the "victim" in a carny show as the scantily-dressed girl sawn in two by her magician uncle. It's an ambiguous ending to a strong movie, but if one follows the train of thought here and assumes that Gabrielle's fate is going to be like that of Evelyn Nesbit (who, after a life of drug addiction and suicide attempts, died in a nursing home in 1967) it's a sad ending indeed.

Great film, but the Blockbuster DVD's of this film were horribly edited, destroying the continuity of the film. If you saw the original version, you will be terribly disappointed with the Blockbuster rental version for sale.

I got this primarily to complement my Rosetta Stone French lessons as I work to bring my French back up, and it was fully satisfying with subtitles and a relatively clean French spoken by the actors that was easily comprehensible and greatly aided by the subtitles.

I've added the image of the cover.

EDITED to remove unfair references to Fairfax County after correction from a more informed viewer in comments.

Romantic liaisons between younger women and older men aren't supposed to last. The initial impulse isn't supposed to last, the incompatibilities in age and lack of shared cultural experiences are supposed to prevent a deep bond from forming, and the censure of polite society is supposed to eventually cause the parties to sever their ties. Yet what if the initial impulse is deep enough, and various parties around the lovers are rash enough, to trigger effects which last for the lifetimes of both participants? This is the intriguing scenario explored by director/writer Claude Chabrol (assisted by writer Cecile Maistre) in "A Girl Cut in Two".

The "May" of the romance is a young on-air television personality wonderfully played by Ludivine Sagnier, who in this film is the embodiment of the expression "a breath of fresh air". The "September" of the romance is an aging author and intellectual capably portrayed by Francois Berleand. Sagnier manages to demonstrate some believable longing and chemistry towards Berleand, even though their scenes together are not explicit (Sagnier fans will see a lot more of her, so to speak, in the film "Swimming Pool"). Unfortunately for our lovers, not only is Berleand's character married as well as fussed over by a publicity agent (played by Mathilda May) with whom he is also dallying on the side, but Sagnier's character is the desired object of affection of a brash, spoiled young heir played by Benoit Magimel. This combustible mix eventually explodes, as it must.

"A Girl Cut in Two" is a very French film, and will appeal to those seeking an immersion in French culture, society, and morals. The setting is not Paris but rather the smaller southern French city of Lyon, which is beautifully captured on film. But the most intriguing aspect of the film is Berleand's character, and what his many actions and deceptions say about French society and morals in the early 21st century. Berleand's character, although he is exalted for the truths contained in his writings, invents different "truths" to suit his circumstances, and eventually pays a price for doing so.

Ludivine Sagnier fans who appreciate her for more than just the charms of her beauty and body will enjoy "A Girl Cut in Two", as will those seeking a thought provoking film about upper-crust French society.

A very passionate, heart felt predicament unravels in this well told story. A must for anyone who has ever truly been in love with someone who did not love them in return.

Claude Chabrol has been a favorite of mine for many years. His early films, Le Beau Serge (1958) & Les Cousins (1959), are New Wave film festival favorites nearly impossible to find on VHS and unavailable on DVD. But his 1960's & early 1970's stuff (Les Biches, La Femme Infidele, Le Boucher) is definitely available and more than worth your while. These were the films that earned him the "French Hitchcock" title. Most of his films deal exclusively with infidelity among the social elite, but on rare occasions, ie. Le Boucher, he also explores middle class transgressions. And on even rarer occasions, ie. La Ceremonie (1995), he explores the tensions between the classes.

Claude Chabrol is a New Wave director that has a recognizable style but that style has steadily evolved over the years. The early Hitchcock influence is no longer as apparent, but this keenly observant directors sense of how social setting & psychology interact with each other has never been stronger than it is now. The old films usually hinged around a murder, the new ones around more mundane but equally fascinating choices.

A Girl Cut in Two is about two men in love with the same young woman. Both of the men are wealthy while the woman is not. It is a story about money and the privilege it bestows and also about the relative merits of innocence & experience.

The real star here is Ludivine Sagnier who played the promiscuous nubile "Julie" in Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool. Here she plays Gabrielle who is in many ways reminiscent of Julie in that Gabrielle too is an interesting combination of naive audacity & extreme vulnerability.

The men who fall for Gabrielle are famous author Charles Saint-Denis & idle heir Paul Gaudens. Charles won the Prix Goncourt in 1969 and has written a steady flow of critically acclaimed bestsellers ever since and he takes full advantage of the privileges bestowed on him by both wealth and celebrity. Paul (who dresses and acts like an Oxford dandy on holiday) was simpy born into this class that makes & lives by its own self-serving rules. Both men are instantly attracted to Gabrielle who is intrigued by the writer's experience & by the young dandy's unexpected innocence.
The young Gabrielle never had a father figure in her life, and so, at first, the older man wins. And no one seems to be in any position to stop her or help her realize what kind of man he is and perhaps she never really knows. Is he depraved or just weak?

Chabrol is a master of allowing characters to be and remain complex, all of them(even the minor characters) seem to have unresolved issues that remain unresolved. Watching these characters we are never certain what it is they want from each other from one moment to the next. Their actions, their choices & reversals, seem to surprise even themselves.

With characters as complex as these and as unresolved as these no pat ending is possible and Chabrol does not offer one. Early in his career Chabrol was known for his twist endings, but now the endings are extremely ambiguous & even more intriguing. All things begin and end in mystery.

Highly recommended.

Okay, to enjoy a film, I personally need a character to at least feel some empathy with. The three main characters in this movie are all vacuous fools. A young woman (very sexy) falls for a married author. So she's a ditz and a tramp, and the old guy is a pig and a perv. And she sees and uses this young guy, played extremely ineffectively, when things fall through with the old fart. A spoiled useless rich punk prone to jealousy and fits of stupidity. All in all, just a waste. No suspense at ALL, just mindless conversation by self-centered idiots. And it's advertised as being sexy and adult. Not True! No sex worthy of mention and no nudity. Boring. Dull. I watched it a few days ago and have no lingering memory at all. Maybe a few, and I want them to go away soon.