La fille coupée en deux

"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young." Oscar Wilde

I'm cut in two myself: wanting A Girl Cut in Two to be a companion piece to Patrice Leconte's unforgettable Girl on the Bridge (1999) and yet realizing it is wrong to expect such a complement. French icon Claude Chabrol's Girl Cut is an amusing and agonizing romance between an older writer and a young TV weather girl, about 30 years in between their ages. The story of the lost young woman and her older carnival knife thrower in Girl on a Bridge has layers of emotion where Girl Split contains little depth but the same type of metaphors.

Girl Cut recycles the January-May love affair, similar to the recent Elegy about a young woman and an older professor. The immediate attraction between the two is not explored, just the girl's voluptuousness and his pot-belly, receding hair, and low energy level. But then I should not forget the ultimate aphrodisiac: intellectualism. The common denominator is the mind meld, enacted by an aging thinker/artist and a young open mind.

The figurative splitting is woven into the plot: A spoiled, rich young man, Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), falls for an indifferent Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier), who has a yearning for the older writer Charles Saint-Denis (Francoise Berleand). The triangle illustrates the complex yearnings of an attractive young woman, whose mother (Marie Bunel) spies Gabrielle's need for the father figure as well as her own wish for her daughter to be financially comfortable. The warfare among the classes is typically Francaise.

As for Gabrielle, it is never clear where her love for the old man comes from, for she never seems to read his works, and their interaction before the first tryst is superficial. Perhaps she has a thing for big bellies and bald pates.

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.

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.

I'll be honest, I only watched The Girl Cut in Two because I think Ludivine Sagnier is a Class A hottie. So it's probably not a shock that I was underwhelmed by it.

It's a rather French movie about a woman (Sagnier) who is pursued by two men, a young and emotionally volatile rich man, and an older married writer. Both men are ultimately bad options, and the movie quickly changes from something of a charming romantic film to something much darker in tone. It could be called "a movie cut in two", if a person wanted to be clever (which I do). 

Anyway, neither half of the movie was particularly good, in my opinion. The narrative tended to wander, Sagnier's character seemed silly and unsympathetic with little explanation of why, and the other characters were almost universally unlikable or uninteresting. Combine all that with the odd (and not in a compelling way) ending, and The Girl Cut in Two becomes a movie that I probably wouldn't recommend.

Accordind to the IMDb's listing, "La Fille coupée en deux" is the 69th Claude Chabrol's movie since 1958 and his first movie "Le beau Serge". 69 : with that number, Chabrol has managed to outnumber his old master : Alfred Hitchckock. And if all of his movies are not as good as Hitchcock's ones (none of them actually), I'm sure his last one would have amused Sir Alfred, for it's certainly one of his richest and intriguing movie since many years. I thing I've not been such intrigued by a Chabrol's since "L'enfer" in 1994 and its "No end" ending.

"La Fille coupée en deux" apparently deals with the same subject as "L'enfer" : love, and it's tragic consequences. But if "L'enfer" mostly dealt with madness and jealousy, "La fille..." approaches tragedy (but always in a cynical and almost funny way : Chabrol's universe is alway game-full) with the thematic of desire. It's the girl cut in half of the tittle that crystallizes this desire : Gabrielle Aurore Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), a young TV-host, desires an older and decadent writer Charles Saint Denis (the great François Berléand) and is desired by a young and crazy aristocrat (Benoît Magimel, it's the first time to me that he's quite acceptable in a movie). Chabrol plays for a time with his characters ans his spectators, who don't exactly know where he wants to bring us. But the game is interesting enough to be played.

This movie looks a lot like Woody Allen's "Scoop", with Ludivide Sagner as a french Scarlet Johanson. Chabrol even quotes Woody Allen in the movie, and shares with him the same tragic but insouciant thriller tone. But it's really the similarity with another director that stroke me with this movie. It's the first time that a Chabrol's movie strangely sometimes looks like a Brisseau's. Chabrol uses here, as in Brisseau's "Choses Secrètes", symbolic feminine mythological figures in order to develop his thematics ( it's particularly striking in the dichotomously representation of Charles Saint Denis' two woman : his white and angel-like wife, and his dark and mysterious Capucine). But it's mostly in the desire's representation in the strange club where Saint Denis likes to go that the two directors share some common points. Of course, whereas Brisseau is more than explicit, Chabrol doesn't show anything, but the moral fable aspect of the movie, with a Hitchcock's influence in the way Chabrol "suspenses" the desire representation, makes this movie quiet near to Brisseau's universe.

Anyway, it's been a very long time since a Chabrol's movie didn't appear to me as rich, original and surprising as this one.