A Girl Cut in Two
Directed by Claude Chabrol
at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas & the IFC Center
What makes Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two (2007) so trying is not that it’s unsure of what it wants to be, but rather that it refuses to decide. Like in his Cop Au Vin (1985), Chabrol starts to follow one character and then fails to properly transition to the film’s real star, thanks to his bias for the first one. Initially, it seems like a film about getting more perverse as one gets older (somewhere, Jacques Nolot is sighing). However, Chabrol eventually loses interest in our old Lothario, acclaimed author Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) and concentrates on his young prey, weather girl Gabrielle De Neige (Ludivine Sagnier). The film’s cerebral affectations unravel because neither one is ultimately able to carry the film’s disjointed plot.
Gabrielle’s affair with both Saint-Denis and ostentatious nouveau riche blueblood Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel) is meant to be the film’s real focus. But that decision, like many of others made throughout the film, is fundamentally arbitrary. Something is clearly amiss in A Girl Cut In Two: While Chabrol’s films have always thrived on making victims of their female protagonists, here that victim is also supposed to be a sympathetic heroine.
Chabrol is torn between making Gabrielle the film’s lead or just an unavoidable MacGuffin with a lot more lines than she needs (“A woman is only worth as much as the desire she arouses,” Charles’ bartender apologizes). She is the titular girl but, perhaps more importantly, for the first half of the film, she is also Charles’ plaything. Only later when Chabrol really starts to follow her does it become clear what she means when she says, “It’s not that simple, is it?” In the film, she’s excusing Paul; but she could just as easily be shrugging her shoulders at Chabrol’s caprice.
This intentional confusion of his characters’ roles suggests that even though the film is about the uneven nature of the trio’s ménage a trois, only Gabrielle and Charles are meant to share the lead role. They take turns as the film’s central martyr and self-righteous protagonist. Paul is also a clichéd, one-note bundle of nerves, but he is nevertheless the butt of the film’s jokes and the flamboyant upstart that embodies the folly and nervy insanity of youthful passion.
None of the three paramours are depicted as actual characters but, rather, as symptomatic descriptions: the punishing old lover, the flirtatious, pretty young thing that loves him and the mad, young upstart that gets between them. We cannot fathom what attracts them to each other except the superficial—for Charles, it’s Gabrielle’s good looks and her knowledge of aphorisms; for Paul, it’s her good looks and Charles’ attraction to her.
In fact, we don’t really know anything about them as people apart from the quirky hang-ups that Chabrol confuses for psychological complexes. Charles and Gabrielle are favored because they are “not simple”: Charles is old and apparently likes them smart and willing to be embarrassed sexually; Gabrielle is always treated like a child and hence wants to be seen as both sexy and mature; Paul just looks and acts like an ass. This makes Paul the most sympathetic character because, with the exception of a negligible monologue where he bemoans his mother’s neglect, his character does not claim any deep-seated psychological pretensions.
Neither Charles nor Gabrielle is ever sympathetic, since what makes them human is often overshadowed by the traits that make them larger than life. Though Charles hides behind his wit and reputation, it is his scandalous sexual appetite that defines him. Likewise, Gabrielle deserves our pity because she is unjustly pigeonholed as just another pretty social-climbing airhead. Paul crows, “You don’t know what I’m capable of,” and the same could just as easily be said about any of the characters.
That lack marks the difference between genuinely alluring suggestion and the kind A Girl Cut in Two serves up. From the opening credits’ bizarre use of a tacky red filter, it’s apparent that the film is more interested in stylish insinuation than in real suspense—or consistent storytelling, for that matter.
Chabrol and Cecile Maistre’s screenplay is so frustrating because the pair selectively dishes out and withholds crucial information on a whim. They proudly prop their weak script’s twists up against their characters’ sexual kinks as if they were not only scandalous but also pathologically gripping. Choosing between the two is difficult, but since Chabrol wants it both ways, A Girl Cut in Two is nothing more than an undeveloped provocation.
Directed by Claude Chabrol
at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas & the IFC Center
What makes Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two (2007) so trying is not that it’s unsure of what it wants to be, but rather that it refuses to decide. Like in his Cop Au Vin (1985), Chabrol starts to follow one character and then fails to properly transition to the film’s real star, thanks to his bias for the first one. Initially, it seems like a film about getting more perverse as one gets older (somewhere, Jacques Nolot is sighing). However, Chabrol eventually loses interest in our old Lothario, acclaimed author Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) and concentrates on his young prey, weather girl Gabrielle De Neige (Ludivine Sagnier). The film’s cerebral affectations unravel because neither one is ultimately able to carry the film’s disjointed plot.
Gabrielle’s affair with both Saint-Denis and ostentatious nouveau riche blueblood Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel) is meant to be the film’s real focus. But that decision, like many of others made throughout the film, is fundamentally arbitrary. Something is clearly amiss in A Girl Cut In Two: While Chabrol’s films have always thrived on making victims of their female protagonists, here that victim is also supposed to be a sympathetic heroine.
Chabrol is torn between making Gabrielle the film’s lead or just an unavoidable MacGuffin with a lot more lines than she needs (“A woman is only worth as much as the desire she arouses,” Charles’ bartender apologizes). She is the titular girl but, perhaps more importantly, for the first half of the film, she is also Charles’ plaything. Only later when Chabrol really starts to follow her does it become clear what she means when she says, “It’s not that simple, is it?” In the film, she’s excusing Paul; but she could just as easily be shrugging her shoulders at Chabrol’s caprice.
This intentional confusion of his characters’ roles suggests that even though the film is about the uneven nature of the trio’s ménage a trois, only Gabrielle and Charles are meant to share the lead role. They take turns as the film’s central martyr and self-righteous protagonist. Paul is also a clichéd, one-note bundle of nerves, but he is nevertheless the butt of the film’s jokes and the flamboyant upstart that embodies the folly and nervy insanity of youthful passion.
None of the three paramours are depicted as actual characters but, rather, as symptomatic descriptions: the punishing old lover, the flirtatious, pretty young thing that loves him and the mad, young upstart that gets between them. We cannot fathom what attracts them to each other except the superficial—for Charles, it’s Gabrielle’s good looks and her knowledge of aphorisms; for Paul, it’s her good looks and Charles’ attraction to her.
In fact, we don’t really know anything about them as people apart from the quirky hang-ups that Chabrol confuses for psychological complexes. Charles and Gabrielle are favored because they are “not simple”: Charles is old and apparently likes them smart and willing to be embarrassed sexually; Gabrielle is always treated like a child and hence wants to be seen as both sexy and mature; Paul just looks and acts like an ass. This makes Paul the most sympathetic character because, with the exception of a negligible monologue where he bemoans his mother’s neglect, his character does not claim any deep-seated psychological pretensions.
Neither Charles nor Gabrielle is ever sympathetic, since what makes them human is often overshadowed by the traits that make them larger than life. Though Charles hides behind his wit and reputation, it is his scandalous sexual appetite that defines him. Likewise, Gabrielle deserves our pity because she is unjustly pigeonholed as just another pretty social-climbing airhead. Paul crows, “You don’t know what I’m capable of,” and the same could just as easily be said about any of the characters.
That lack marks the difference between genuinely alluring suggestion and the kind A Girl Cut in Two serves up. From the opening credits’ bizarre use of a tacky red filter, it’s apparent that the film is more interested in stylish insinuation than in real suspense—or consistent storytelling, for that matter.
Chabrol and Cecile Maistre’s screenplay is so frustrating because the pair selectively dishes out and withholds crucial information on a whim. They proudly prop their weak script’s twists up against their characters’ sexual kinks as if they were not only scandalous but also pathologically gripping. Choosing between the two is difficult, but since Chabrol wants it both ways, A Girl Cut in Two is nothing more than an undeveloped provocation.
