Review of "A Girl Cut in Two"

Title: La fille coupée en deux

Dates: No longer showing

Where: Charles Theatre, 1711 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21201

French master of suspense, Claude Chabrol, delivers a stereotypical tale albeit incisive critique on male-female relationships...

Young perky blue-eyed television weather girl falls for an old married distinguished author, Charles Saint-Denis (played by François Berléand), and for an eccentric psychopathic boyish young bachelor, Paul Gaudens (played by Benoît Magimel). A young woman, an old man, and a young man!? What’s new about this film, you might ask? As a general plot line about a stereotypical triangular love affair between one doll face blond and two dominating men, nothing. What is new is its brutally honest and incisive look into this pretty but mentally insipid young girl’s love life. The film is a critique on female submissiveness as much as it is an homage to female beauty.

Like many French films, there’s no decisive beginning, middle, or end. The viewer is literally thrown right into Charles' luxurious house in the suburbs as his publisher arrives -slim, sleek, and sexy all in black- during the first few minutes of the film to discuss his current work. The ease with which she walks around and sits on the couch makes you wonder if their relationship is purely business. And then when Charles' wife appears all in white and all three are seated around the house's outdoor pool, wearing ultra figure-flattering suits, your suspicions only get heightened.

Even the arrival of the always stunning light-headed weather girl of Lyon, Gabrielle Deneige, doesn't help to turn your attention to Charles' apparently well-received intellectual merits. Au contraire, the viewer is forced to forget whatever Charles has just written and been lauded for and watch how he "charmingly" yet greedily looks at Gabrielle and how she flirtatiously gives in. Forward one third into the film and she's what you expected: the old man’s sex toy, literally, as she lovingly crawls to him from the lowest edge of the screen with pouting lips in a bustier and belt with peacock feathers that hardly cover her bare derrière.

But being young and coquettish, yes, you guessed it, means simultaneously attracting the attention of a man her own age. Unfortunately for her, she's aggressively sought after by Paul, the flamboyant son of a wealthy pharmaceutical family. Despite her futile attempts to escape his intrusive and ridiculously cynical advances, she hesitantly yields in chic colorful dresses and immaculate rouge on her lips, becoming the young man’s Barbie.

Two thirds into the film and there's no pitying this girl, this doll. Despite her warm smile, every corner is dark as the camera consistently slithers around the actors from either waist or eye level. Charles takes Gabrielle on the eve of her birthday, as if to an initiation ceremony, to a swanky bordel filled with the usual prime suspects: designer clad fat balding men accompanied by tan back-bearing gorgeous women. The stereotypes are obvious, purposefully placed in every frame to remind the viewer that women are objects precisely because of their beauty. And in this film, the availability of breasts in every scene is all inclusive. The screen breathes female sexuality. From the framed photographs of nude female statues in Charles' house to the camera's consistent gaze on all the women's chests. Neither Charles, nor Paul, nor the viewer can flee from the omnipresent female figure.

In spite of the visual aesthetics of the female form, it is sad and quite pathetic to watch Gabrielle being cut in two by the film's conclusion. She has certainly not learned her lesson as she poses adorned in vulgar stage makeup for her uncle as his showgirl doll, assisting him on stage while he performs one of his magic tricks. One never really knows and understands why Gabrielle falls for these men. Perhaps at some unconscious level Charles stands in as a father figure to the fatherless Gabrielle. After all, he is the only one the viewer witnesses caressing her. Perhaps because Paul is able to proportion her with expensive dinners, a chic red sports car, and whisk her off to a marble-encased hotel in Lisbon she is able to escape her annoying lustful boss and distressed mother who do nothing to relax the mounting stress surrounding her as the love affairs take over her life. To this effect, Chabrol remains Chabrolian by engulfing the viewer with unanswerable questions and unpredictable moments.

Consistent since the beginnings of the nouvelle vague, Chabrol has never failed to showcase beautiful and talented actresses in his films. To name a few, there’s the porcelain red-haired Marlène Jobert in La décade prodigieuse (Ten days wonder), the mysterious sensual Romy Schneider in Les innocents aux mains sales (Innocents with dirty hands), the naughty adolescent-like Isabelle Huppert in La cérémonie (The ceremony), the thin dainty Sandrine Bonnaire in Au coeur du mensonge (The color of lies), and the Chanel suit-clad Isabelle Huppert in Merci pour le chocolat (Nightcap). In this film, rising star Ludivine Sagnier embodies the coquettish heroine beautifully as she gets tossed back and forth like a pelele by everyone she knows. A pity, however, that neither the story nor the camera ever care to zoom in on Sagnier's character's emotional development. Not even the final tears on her painted face leave you sympathizing with her. She was just a rag doll after all.

For those of you who have never seen a Chabrol film, don’t waste your time, it is definitely one of his weaker works. But for those of you who are die-hard Chabrol fans, go ahead and watch it. You'll probably get bored with the whole storyline, but you’ll most certainly appreciate his murderously satiric view into the pathetic love life of the bourgeoisie.