Movies: La Fille Coupee en Deux * * *
(Club, IFI)
Friday May 29 2009
Claude Chabrol is one of the last defiant survivors of the nouvelle vague revolution.
Famous for his stylish, grim and complex thrillers (Que la Bete Meure is a fine example), at 78 he's still vigorously plying his trade. In La Fille Coupée en Deux, he takes on a dark story of a young woman caught between and corrupted by two remorseless and egotistical men.
Ludivine Sagnier has the kind of pouty French prettiness that verges on the absurd, and is well cast as Gabrielle Deneige, a glamorous young TV weather girl whose ambition is matched only by her naivete.
Not exactly behind the houses when it comes to using her sexuality to get ahead, Gabrielle is an accident waiting to happen, and it's her mother Marie (Marie Bunel) who unwittingly supplies the banana skin.
The owner of a small bookshop, she tells her daughter that the celebrated novelist Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) will be doing a signing at the store.
Gabrielle is interested, and though he's at least 30 years her senior, and married, they begin a passionate affair. But Gabrielle soon realises his affable, donnish manner masks a sadistic nature.
As he toys with her, another suitor emerges. Paul Gaudens (wonderfully overplayed by Benoit Magimel) is the spoilt and unstable heir to a pharmaceutical fortune; he is smitten with Gabrielle, but also cordially detests Saint-Denis, which makes his motives equally uncertain.
And as Gabrielle is pushed and pulled between the two, their complete indifference to her wellbeing becomes clear.
La Fille Coupée en Deux has aspirations towards black comedy, but that plan is scuppered by the fact that it's not funny. And Chabrol's insistence on enigma and realistically messy endings leaves one feeling unsatisfied.
