The Girl Cut in Two [DVD]

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 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 A Comedy of Power.

**** spoilers ****

The Girl Cut in Two is a well constructed and competently acted psychological twist on the old love triangle theme. It explores areas of debauched decadence (OK I suppose you could call it sordid) but in a surprisingly coy manner. The love scenes do not stray much beyond a 12 rating (although I'd like to know exactly WHAT she was getting up to under the covers!), the group sex is intimated rather than displayed and even the players' language is restrained - nothing more then the occasional 'merde' or 'seigneur!". At a soupçon under two hours it does plod at times, but there is just enough intrigue and gradual gathering of momentum to maintain the interest. It cumulates in one moment of mildly shocking violence, followed by its sobering consequences, as the film fades away. The final scene is quite amusing, but hammers the titular metaphor home with a deliberate lack of subtlety!

So why just the three stars? Well, with the exception of the sympathetic gravel-voiced uncle, all the characters are just so downright unlikeable! Charles Saint-Denis, played convincingly by François Berléand, is a somewhat charismatic but utterly selfish and depraved old reprobate, whereas spoilt little rich boy Paul Gaudens is impossibly arrogant and loathsome. Our heroine (that is SO the wrong word) Gabrielle comes over as a chavvy and egotistical gold-digger. Even the minor players are rather unengaging. Gabrielle's mother is weak and has an impossible laissez faire attitude to her daughter's disastrous relationships. Gabrielle's creepy colleague has all the charm of a dead fish as he attempts to flirt clumsily with her. Gaudens' mother is cold and dispassionate (although she does recognise the doomed nature of the relationship). OK so the plot is that Gabrielle falls for Saint-Denis but, after being unceremoniously dumped after the old letch has had his fun, decides to make do with Gaudens. Of course it is doomed to failure, as Gaudens all-consuming jealousy leads to inevitable tragedy.

So there we have it. Undeniably well-made, a visual treat and mildly intriguing but, I guess I'm just not sophisticated enough to REALLY enjoy a movie in which I care little about any of the characters.

Opinion here is very sharply divided between "terrific film" and "complete waste". I hope I can mediate.

I have 30 of Chabrol's films -- slightly more than for any other cinéaste. A few days before watching this one, I watched Masques, made in 87. Nothing could have brought home more clearly how much Chabrol is trying to keep up with the times and it shows in a number of ways.

The most immediately obvious difference is in the style of acting and the diction. Watching both in French-only versions, I got almost all of the dialogue in Masques but probably only 85% in Coupée -- that's how much more intimate and, frankly, mumbled and slovenly the French in films generally has become -- even French people often complain they can't get the dialogue. Secondly, the sexual morality has changed and I mean morality, not what people do or don't do. (On this point, BTW, and to answer the reviewer who asks what Ludivine was doing under the sheets, I seem to remember lover boy saying to her "Who's taught you to suck like that?") Ludivine Saignier's character here, as she makes clear in the "making of" on the French version, simply doesn't experience any of the guilt or embarrassment that a woman of a previous generation might have done.

This removes a plot driver that would have been important in Chabrol's earlier films and I think he's responding to something else too. Postmodernist thinking is very distrustful of plots. There is one here but the interest is mainly in how an old tale of a woman's response to sexual jealousy between competing males can be used to explore contemporary sexual mores among the various "couches sociales" in France today. If that subject interests you, you'll probably like the film: if not, then you probably won't.