Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Gabrielle is young, gorgeous and on her way up in life. She is a TV weather lady but the network has plans for her to become an anchor. She also seems very confident, bright and articulate. Yet, at the same time, she's a complete idiot when it comes to men. She has two simultaneous affairs--one with a married author (Charles) and one with a super-possessive and scary heir to a huge family fortune (Paul). Neither is a great choice--the married guy is interesting and she loves him, but he'll never leave his wife. Paul, on the other hand, seems to have nothing to offer--other than, perhaps, money. He is so possessive that anyone with half a brain would run from him--and at first she does. But, when she realizes her married lover isn't ever going to commit, she marries the nut-case on the rebound. And you KNOW that all this will end in tragedy--partly because of the plot and partly because it's a Claude Chabrol movie and they almost always end with someone dying! So, until something horrid happens, you sit back and just wait....You know, it's interesting that this is actually a recreation of the famous very early 20th century American crime--when a very unstable millionaire (Harry Thaw) murdered architect Stanford White in front of MANY witnesses. It was prompted by Thaw's jealousy about his wife's affair with the much older White before she married Thaw. And, in an interesting twist, Thaw (so some extent) got away with it--spending a bit of time in a mental hospital and not prison or capital punishment. When I realized all this, it made the ending of "Girl Cut in Two" a foregone conclusion. In every major way, it's the same story set now in 21st century France. Even the way the killer's mother reacts to the wife is pretty much the same as well as the court case.So, the plot, though interesting, is certainly not original and is 100% predictable. Yet, despite the poor choice of recreating the original story almost exactly (a bit mistake--they should have rearranged the story much more), the film is good. The acting is excellent and the deliberate pace very nice. It looks good and is more enjoyable to those who don't know American history, nor have seen "Ragtime" or "The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing". It's interesting how few of the other reviewers realized this was based on the famous Thaw trial--and this does put an entirely different slant on the movie. And, it's also sad that this unoriginal plot was director Chabrol's last film--though his direction, to be fair, was very good.By the way, and this is NOT a criticism of Chabrol, but I am getting sick of seeing people refer to his films as 'Hitchcockian'. Part of this is because exactly what this is no one can really say. Also, it's not fair to Chabrol--can't a film be 'Chabrolian'?! Just me two cents.

Updating (and transposing to France) an American cause célèbre of the early 1900s – already lavishly filmed in Hollywood as THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING (1955) – this is one of the few cases (like ALICE OR THE LAST ESCAPADE [1977], M. LE MAUDIT [1982; TV], QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY [1990], DR. M [1990], MADAME BOVARY [1991] and L'ENFER [1994]) where Chabrol attempted to put his stamp on material already dealt with by other hands. In this, he was not unlike Fritz Lang (who had remade two Jean Renoir films in the U.S.) and it seems no coincidence that the scenes in A GIRL CUT IN TWO depicting the elder male lead spending time with his equally jaded colleagues in an exclusive men's private club evoke memories of Lang's THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944).If the film itself is wholly predictable and certainly cannot be counted among Chabrol's very best efforts, this attests to the high standard of his oeuvre. Though the beguiling Ludivine Sagnier is at the centre of it, her character actually serves mainly to enlighten those of the (more interesting) couple of men she becomes involved with: successful middle-aged novelist Francois Berleand (who resembles a lot the way Werner Herzog looks today!) and the conceited yet volatile member of a fallen aristocracy played by Benoit Magimel. Incidentally, I could not help noticing how, for the most part, the various romantic neuroses involved, set as they are against an elitist backdrop, almost feel like your typical Woody Allen product! As such, the plot offers little surprises – that is, apart from an implied raw sexuality – but the solid craftsmanship, infused with Chabrol's trademark meticulousness and irony (as with THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING, the heroine ends up a sideshow attraction!), and a most able cast ensure one's interest never wavers throughout.Unfortunately, the copy I acquired of this film was supplied with one of the worst set of subtitles I have ever encountered – though the sense of what was being said generally came through nonetheless in the broken English adopted, every so often it was so intractable as to prove quite amusing (or infuriating, depending on how you look at it)!

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.

The first thing that pops in mind after watching 'La fille coupée en deux' (= French for 'the girl cut into two parts') is, that this film provides good entertainment.Devoid of any intellectual or philosophical pretensions, director Claude Chabrol's product does not tell an original story either. It deals with a love affair of a married man over 50, with a girl that easily could have been his daughter. Having another male lover of her own age in the background, this triangle predictably results in disaster.What makes 'La fille coupée en deux' special, however, is the refined, typical French way of telling its story. Although doubtless serious, the plot of this film never and nowhere puts a heavy weight on your mind. The advertising on my DVD's French sleeve hits it well: "a dramatic comedy, soft as well as bitter, orchestrated by a master's hand".Good entertainment, I said. No more than that - and certainly no less than that.