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Cahiers du Cinéma member Claude Chabrol is back! Just like fellow CdC member Eric Rohmer, the prolific French filmmaker remains active in his film career. This new film marks his second feature for the new decade, after Le Demoiselle d’honneur. The film is entitled Girl Cut in Two (La Fille coupée en deux). Piers Handling reports:

The Nouvelle Vague is back in force this year with new films by Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and, now, Claude Chabrol. Each new work by one of these masters remains an event, and none more so than Chabrol’s wicked and beautifully realized La Fille coupée en deux. He has always revelled in the human foibles of his deeply flawed but eminently recognizable characters, and here he rises to the occasion to create a superbly caustic tale of – as the title describes her – a girl cut in two.

Setting his story in the resplendent countryside around Lyon, Chabrol places his constellation of characters against the backdrop of the publishing, television and pharmaceutical industries.

The pert young woman at the heart of the film is Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), the local television station’s breezy and popular weather girl. Famous author Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand) and his exceedingly attractive wife (Valeria Cavalli) add colour to the community. Charles is fleeing the unwanted publicity that fame has bestowed on him in Paris and is happy to enjoy his privacies and pleasures in the countryside. Rounding out the cast of characters is Paul Gaudens (Benoît Magimel), the rakish, arrogant and irresponsible son of a distinguished family that has made a fortune in the pharmaceutical business.

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Despite his wife’s beauty, Charles has a wandering eye. When he spies the sprightly Gabrielle at a book signing, he plans his next conquest. But he soon finds an unexpected rival in the suave young Paul. Faced with the choice of two attractive men – one married and older, the other her age and unattached – Gabrielle perversely chooses… you guessed it!

What transpires is unalloyed fun, and you can sense Chabrol’s wicked grin behind the camera in every scene. As one lover is bedded and the other spurned, we find ourselves entering a labyrinthine world where the innocent look for love while the worldly-wise seek mere diversion. Or perhaps not. Chabrol mixes these delicious ingredients together into one of the most appetizing experiences of the year. With a film that is by turns droll, touching and scatological, and full of twists and curves, the master shows that he has lost none of his youthful energy.

[ Official movie site ] [ Ludivine Saginer @IMDb ] [ Benoît Magimel ]

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