La fille coupée en deux (2007) Reviews

• Placid

  gridoon20192009-01-23

  "A Girl Cut In Two" is the kind of movie that requires a lot of patience from its audience (it moves slowly and runs long), without really rewarding them for it at the end. Listed by IMDb as a drama/thriller, it is basically a drama about a young weather girl (and later TV show host) caught in two parallel relationships with a middle-aged writer and a rich heir about her age, with the "thriller" part (such as it is) coming into play only in the last 20 minutes. One of the main problems with the film is that the viewer can see right away that neither of these relationships is going to work out - the older man is married and just looking for cheap thrills, the younger man acts borderline psychotic right from the start - and you wonder how the heroine, who seems fairly smart in most ways, can be so naive as to not see that these two men are unworthy of her time. Perhaps the two most likable characters - the heroine's uncle and the young man's little sister - have very little screen time. The film is very well-acted, especially by Ludivine Sagnier and Francois Berléand, but ultimately it is a minor work for someone of Claude Chabrol's great reputation. (**)

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• Old Man Look at my Life

  ferguson-62008-10-29

  Greetings again from the darkness. With splashes of dark humor, I mostly found the film depressing. There are few things more disheartening than a totally desperate woman longing to be loved by one jerk, let alone two. Luckily, this desperate woman is played by the gorgeous Ludivine Sagnier (from the far superior Swimming Pool). She is a TV weathergirl and talk show host who falls completely for an old man novelist (played very well by Francois Berleand). When she is spurned by the old guy, totally annoying, rich boy stalker comes along to rescue her. Trust fund baby Paul is played creepily by Benoit Magimel, who steals most of his scenes. Directed by French master Claude Chabrol, the film just never allowed me to connect with any of the players. They all seemed to hate themselves and have no respect for anyone else. Quite the party, eh? The performances are such that it is watchable though I would have appreciated a more detailed characterization throughout the script. One simple question ... why did she fall for the old man? Just a baffling development for me.

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• How happy would I be with either. . .

  Chris Knipp2007-09-20

  Chabrol's latest film (La Fille coupée en deux) is a barbed comedy set in the city of Lyons. A charming young TV weather person, Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), suddenly finds two men competing for her affections. The successful writer Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) is appearing on TV when he first runs into Gabrielle; her mother (Marie Bunel) works at the bookstore where he's later signing his new book. Though he's a good thirty years her senior, they feel an instant connection. To her, he's sexy, fascinating, and rich. But not nearly so rich as Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), the capricious young heir to a vast local pharmaceutical fortune. With his tinted Napoleonic hairdo and flamboyant wardrobe, Magimel spins onto each scene like some spoiled princeling. He's amusing, absurd, and a bit menacing. There are obvious hints that he may be completely wacko. He spots Gabrielle too at the book signing, falls for her, and woos her aggressively henceforth. Saint-Denis lives with professed contentment and serenity in a splendid superbly brittle ultramodern house in the country and has a vivacious and understanding and longstanding wife (Dona, Valeria Cavalli. Gaudens lives in a mansion with his widowed mother (Caroline Sihot) and two grown sisters. Both men have some dark scandals and improprieties hidden in their past, though we don't learn much about them. In this relatively provincial world they are well acquainted with, and have always cordially detested, each other. It appears that Gabrielle is led into some indecencies by Charles, whose special club and in-town pied-a-terre she visits more than once. Preposterous as it may seem, Paul, who's head-over-heels for Gabrielle, appoints himself Gabrielle's moral savior. Though she's sought after by Canal+ and her current boss wants to make her the emcee of a new show, Gabrielle eschews these opportunities for advancement and instead devotes nearly all her time to pursuing or being pursued by these two men, enjoying the attentions of the curiously endearing Paul, but running off the instant the sophisticated Charles summons her—because he's the one she truly adores. (In the French cinema, older men are quite commonly seen as the more attractive.) Both Berleand, a convincing ladies man, and the visually transformed Magimel, by now a Chabrol regular if not a male muse, are splendid in their roles. Sagnier, whom Americans will probably best remember as Tinker Belle or the naughty young woman in Ozon's Swimming Pool, projects a world of beauty, charm, vivacity, and (relative) innocence. The Girl Cut in Two is highly amusing. The script by Chabrol's longtime assistant Cecile Maistre sparkles with witty zingers in every scene and has particular fun with the literary world, "intellectual" TV shows, and as always with the director, the gilded squalor of the upper bourgeoisie. This being Lyons, one of France's chief gastronomic capitals, there are lots of good restaurants and there's lots of good wine; many coupes of good champagne are tossed back. Nifty sports cars are driven—and when Paul arrives anywhere in his, he leaves it at the door, and tosses away the ticket afterwards with a disdain any driver would envy. For a good part of the time, each scene is more fun than the last. The dialogue is smooth and glib, but it's also smart. This isn't a murder mystery, though a pistol does appear and later it is used. It's more a portrait of emotional conflict. And it treats issues of high and low; of love trumping ambition and then turning out to be naïve; about wealth and madness; about men and women; youth and age. At the center of it is Gabrielle's "search for love." But in focusing on Paul and Charles, Gabrielle is, of course, carrying out that search in two quite wrong places. Both men are as deeply tempting as they are flawed, so it's no wonder she wavers hopelessly between them. Gabrielle marries Paul, but only on the rebound from Charles. This leads to unhappiness, discontent, and finally violence. The film has transposed to contemporary times (without loss of credibility) the story of the 1906 murder, in New York, of the famous American architect and womanizer Stanford White (represented here by the writer) by the husband of his latest mistress. It's a theme dealt with before, notably in Richard Fleischer's 1955 Girl in the Red Velvet Swing and Milos Forman's 1981 screen adaption of E.L. Doctorow's novel, Ragtime. But the Maistre-Chabrol treatment is unique. The Girl Cut in Two is one of Chabrol's lightest and brightest and most buoyant films. It may not, as few can, rest on the top shelf with his absolute classics, but it is the best thing he's done in years. The film was shown at the New York Film Festival 2007 in September; it opened in France in early August.

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• The local weather girl

  jotix1002009-03-21

  It takes a talented director and his collaborating screen writer to turn a typical American story into a bourgeois French drama with a different take on the same basic premise. That is what Claude Chabrol, and Cecile Maistre, who is also his step-daughter, accomplished with this film about obsession and lust that involves a an emotional triangle that one knows is doomed from the start. Gabrielle Deniege, a young television weather person in Lyon, seems to be enjoying herself; she has a promising career and from what one sees, she is the object of desire by her TV boss, who will, no doubt, push her to bigger things in exchange of sexual favors. Alas, Gabrielle has a mind of her own, but even she can't resist the advances of the much older Chales Saint-Denis, a writer she happens to meet at the store where her mother manages. Charles takes a shine to the young woman, who in turn is seduced by the idea of being with the older man. At the same time, the rich young heir of a pharmacy fortune, Paul Gaudens, appears at the same book signing session. He too, it seems, is impressed by young Gabrielle. He begins pursuing her, but little does he know Gabrielle is already involved with Saint-Denis. The older lover takes her to his secret apartment in the city, as well as introducing her to the naughty club he frequents. He has another thing in mind, as we shall learn later on. In the meantime, when the old man decides to go on a trip to England, he drops Gabrielle to fend for herself. Paul, seizes on the opportunity to show how much he cares by taking her to Lisbon, although their affair is, in a sense, a puritanical one. Since Gabrielle senses that Charles is out of the picture, she decides to marry Paul on the rebound. When Saint-Denis shows up again, it's already too late. This film that evidently was made for television shows a different Chabrol, a man who has made a career as a master of the suspense. Alas, there is not so much in this picture, but the viewer is hooked from the beginning of the story, as he knows there will be fireworks out of the elements at stake. The three principals, Ludivine Sagnier, Francois Berleand, and Benoit Magimel, that appear as the angles of the romantic trio, do fine work under Mr. Chabrol's direction. We particularly liked the work of Mr. Berleand, who gives us an excellent chance to enjoy his nuanced performance. Ms. Saigner keeps getting better all the time, and the same could be said about Mr. Magimel, a promising young actor who worked with the director in "La fleur du mal". Caroline Sihol, who is seen as Paul's mother, gives a touch of class as the rich and controlling society woman. Even a minor Chabrol is better than most of what comes out of France these days.

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• good premise, not so credible development

  massimo-pigliucci2008-08-31

  The premise of the movie, that two super-size ego men, one young and rich and the other old and famous, go after a young woman, who doesn't know what she is getting into, is interesting. Unfortunately, the woman's feelings for the two seem to develop at a fast food pace that undermines the credibility of the entire story. Some reviewers have argued that the central female character is more complex and nuanced than previous attempts by director Claude Chabrol. If so, I cannot imagine how misogynist his previous movies were. Still worth it, especially for the acting performance by François Berléand. If you want to pay attention to a sexy and attractive woman in the movie, though, forget about the main character, and focus on Capucine, played by Mathilda May.

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