Reviewed by Robert Hull
Stars Ludivine Sagnier, François Berléand Benoît Magimel,
Mathilda May, Caroline Silhol, Marie Bunel, Valéria Cavalli,
Thomas Chabrol, Jean-Marie Winling
Written by Cécile Maistre and Claue Chabrol
Certification UK 15
Runtime 115 minutes
Directed by Claude Chabrol
It is a dispiriting feeling when a film that has been written with attention to fine detail, and injected with shots of invention and intelligence, fails to deliver the fruits of its labours. This is the way with director Claude Chabrol’s The Girl Cut in Two. You might ask, “why so dispiriting?” My answer: because I like artistic endeavours to succeed, and because cinemas are already full of generic, by-the-numbers movies.
Chabrol is virtually French film-making royalty. He wrote for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s – along with Godard, Truffaut, Rhomer and Rivette. And, during his 1960s heyday, he directed Les Cousins, La Femme Infidele and Que La Bete Meurt, films that were critically acclaimed and commercially successful.
The Girl Cut in Two lifts its story from a famous crime of passion, the 1906 murder of Stanford White, a Manhattan architect and infamous womaniser, who was killer by his mistress’s husband. (Richard Fleischer’s 1955 movie, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, reflects the case accurately.)
Here, Chabrol turns White into Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand) a bestselling novelist who, though allegedly happily married, feels an instant connection when he meets Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), a beautiful, young TV weather presenter. Deneige experiences a similar connection, while also being romantically pursued by Paul Gaudens (Benoît Magimel), the wealthy heir of a pharmaceutical company. The erratic, schizophrenic Gaudens loathes Saint-Denis and longs to have Gabrielle for himself.
So, our girl is split in two: two suitors, one young and from “new” money, the other a mature man from “old” money – and we have a story divided by class warfare. Equally, Saint-Denis is intellectually pondering whether society is moving towards puritanism or decadence – and the story divides along moral lines. Chabrol even “cuts” scenes short, and allows others to run longer, in order for the idea of rupture to always be present.
This gives the film a broken and disturbed rhythm, and is an unsatisfying experiment. You can understand what Chabrol is trying to achieve but that doesn’t mean the journey he takes you on is any more fulfilling because of it. The cinematography has style and panache, and the performances from the leads cannot be faulted. But, ultimately, this becomes a case of ambition not matched by substance.