European Films

Much like Woody Allen, French director Claude Chabrol seems unable to live without making movies and after a glory period that decidedly belongs to the past, he now makes a new film of varying quality each year. His latest film La fille coupée en deux (The Girl Cut In Two) however, could be dubbed Chabrol’s Match Point (to continue the Allen metaphor); a deliciously dark and well-observed tale that marks a fine return to form. For his story of a girl torn between two men Chabrol works with many of the reliable members of his extended film and real family, though the addition of two women, actress Ludivine Sagnier and Cécile Maistre, the director’s stepdaughter and first assistant director who debuts as a screenwriter on the film, are new assets that might have triggered this renewed confidence and sharp wit. The film is part of the upcoming Venice Film Festival and will likely play far and wide.

 

A radiant Ludivine Sagnier (Les chansons d'amour, Swimming Pool) plays Gabrielle Deneige, the pretty weather girl at a local TV station in Lyon who could be a distant French relative of Nicole Kidman’s character in To Die For. She is interested in moving higher up, but not at any price: she decidedly brushes aside the advances from the sleazy station manager.

 

As the daughter of a local bookseller (Marie Bunel), she has an interest in literature and when she meets the respected author Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand, from Chabrol’s L’ivresse du pouvoir / A Comedy of Power) she feels something more than admiration for the man who could have easily been her father. Gabrielle in turn has the same bewitching effect on Paul Gaudens, a rich, somewhat effete and full-out extravagant playboy who was born into money and who is played with delicious glee by Benoît Magimel in his third collaboration with Chabrol after La fleur du mal and La demoiselle d'honneur (The Bridesmaid).

 

Since one is her true love and the other only a rich and very insistent admirer with some anger management issues, the choice does not seem particularly difficult. But this is where Maistre and Chabrol’s writing shows maturity, insight and wit. Saint-Denis is not particularly interested in a long-term relationship with Gabrielle, as he is happily married to a gorgeous woman (Valeria Cavalli) who allows him to have small flings on the side in return for his return home each night, and Paul and his kin have ways of making offers people can’t really refuse -- even against their own better judgement.

 

The story, inspired by true events that happened in the US in 1906, is full of sharply observed details and offers all of the characters enough moments to become full-bodied personalities. The film’s treatment of human relationships and the length to which some people are willing to go to get what they want is unusually complex for what could have been such a straightforward romantic drama-turned-thriller. Chabrol practically X-rays the contemporary French bourgeoisie and it is not a pretty sight.

 

But neither does the French master of suspense simply settle for the message that rich people are rotten (something that some of his previous efforts were guilty of). Paul is not simply a spoilt brat, though the fact that he is used to getting what he wants is certainly an important part of his personality, as he explains to Gabrielle in a hilarious and biting shard of dialogue (the film is quite possibly Chabrol’s funniest to date). And Charles might seem perfect to Gabrielle, but is he really perfect for anybody?

 

Women are not simply playthings for men in this world either -- Gabrielle is very pretty but knows what and who she wants – and doesn’t want. The various women in their forties and fifties that surround her (including Cavalli, Bunel, Mathilda May as Saint-Denis’s editor and Caroline Sihol as Paul's haughty mother) are equally beautiful and have something fundamental that the girl lacks but so admires in Saint-Denis: experience, which allows them to live with their decisions, whether this means making concessions (as Cavalli explains in the film’s most spot-on observation involving balls and angels) or living no holds barred and accepting the consequences, as May's character does.

 

Cinematographer Eduardo Serra, in his 6th collaboration with the director, only adds to the complexity of the work, with his play of mirrors -- responsible for the film’s single most mesmerizing image -- only the most obvious way in which his work enriches the story. Production and costume design are also both excellent, with Chabrol's regular costume designer Mic Cheminal clearly having had a ball creating Magimel’s character’s outlandish, clueless and wannabe-dandy wardrobe.

 

Editing by Monique Fardoulis, who is working steadily towards her 40th collaboration with the director, is incredibly sharp and forces the audience to stay on its toes: it cuts away straight after each joke and each revelation, creating a whirlwind of impressions akin to a flip-book that only offers glimpses from a world that is even more complex than is shown.

 

This was exactly the kind of snappy timing, focused writing and pitch-perfect acting that was missing from L’ivresse du pouvoir.