Running time: 115 minutes
Starring: Francois Berleand,Ludivine Sagnier,Benoit Magimel, Mathilde May
Rating 2 out of 10
Sometimes referred to as France's answer to Alfred Hitchcock, Claude Chabrol has made some of the country's best films of the last fifty years (the director is now 69). Unfortunately A Girl Cut In Two is not one of them. In fact this dire example of a French thriller ranks as a low point in the director's career.
It couldn't be more stereotypically French if it tried. An up- and-coming weather girl at a TV station in Lyon meets and falls for a much older author who is three times her age and happily married. The author has an annoying propensity for quotes and at one point Woody Allen is namechecked - but it's only reminiscent of his later lesser, less successful, works.
Characters are so weak it's non-dimensional. While the girl falls for the older man (seemingly instantly), a much younger snob decides he will have her for himself. Both male characters are hideous: the younger a damaged and effete temperamental bully, the older a boorish ideologue. It's hard to see why a pretty young girl with the world at her feet would be interested in either of them. Instead she follows a series of unbelievable plot devices that lack any credibility and seem to exist only on the whim of Chabrol, who co-wrote the screenplay.
It's completely ridiculous and utterly preposterous and quite painful to watch. While it may actually be trying to comment on modern mores and have the intention of being a dark comedy, it fails to work on any level.
Paul Hurley
It couldn't be more stereotypically French if it tried. An up- and-coming weather girl at a TV station in Lyon meets and falls for a much older author who is three times her age and happily married. The author has an annoying propensity for quotes and at one point Woody Allen is namechecked - but it's only reminiscent of his later lesser, less successful, works.
Characters are so weak it's non-dimensional. While the girl falls for the older man (seemingly instantly), a much younger snob decides he will have her for himself. Both male characters are hideous: the younger a damaged and effete temperamental bully, the older a boorish ideologue. It's hard to see why a pretty young girl with the world at her feet would be interested in either of them. Instead she follows a series of unbelievable plot devices that lack any credibility and seem to exist only on the whim of Chabrol, who co-wrote the screenplay.
It's completely ridiculous and utterly preposterous and quite painful to watch. While it may actually be trying to comment on modern mores and have the intention of being a dark comedy, it fails to work on any level.
Paul Hurley
