FILMS/
A GIRL CUT IN TWO
La fille coupée en deux
World Cinema
France/Germany, 2007, 115 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Thu, May 1 / 8:45 / PFA / GIRL01P
Sun, May 4 / 6:00 / Clay / GIRL04Y
Tue, May 6 / 9:30 / Clay / GIRL06Y
CREDITS
- dir
-
Claude Chabrol
- prod
-
Patrick Godeau
- scr
-
Claude Chabrol, Cécile Maistre
- cam
-
Eduardo Serra
- editor
-
Monique Fardoulis
- mus
-
Matthieu Chabrol
- cast
-
Ludivine Sagnier, Benoît Magimel, François Berléand, Mathilda May, Caroline Sihol, Marie Bunel, Valéria Cavalli
- source
-
IFC , 11 Penn Plaza,15th floor, New York , NY 10001. FAX: 646-273-7250. EMAIL: kakalyka@ifcfilms.com
Claude Chabrol has been at the top of his game for so many years we’re beginning to suspect it’s not a game after all but serious, wicked sport. A Girl Cut in Two has a contemporary setting (almost all his films do) but a period mood; we can feel the ghost of Stendhal in the entrenched class warfare (or is it class trench-warfare?) at play as Chabrol moves his characters around an exquisite social setting. François Berléand stars as a jaded novelist and too happily married ladies man whose latest conquest is poor but honest TV weathergirl Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier). At once naïve and unstoppable, Gabrielle doesn’t need to be convinced to enter into a sordid May-September relationship with a celebrated member of the intelligentsia. However, tugging at her other arm with the pull of the entire haute bourgeoisie is young Paul (Benoît Magimel), the cute but dangerously schizophrenic scion of a Lyon pharmaceutical magnate. What’s a girl to do? Chabrol solves the problem in his usual methodical way, ending with a set piece worthy of Guy Maddin. Appropriately, the story takes as its starting point a famous Gilded Age crime of passion, the murder of Madison Square Garden architect and notorious womanizer Stanford White.
—Judy Bloch
Sponsored by TV5Monde, French Cultural Services, French-American Cultural Society and Air France.
