(La fille coupee en doux, 2007) A genuinely strange late Chabrol, “A Girl Cut In Two” is a lovingly observed melodrama of perversion and of keenly detailed misbehavior. If the 78-year-old director were not more assured, some of the characters’ gestures and bits of behavior might seem pat or flip, but this is elegant work through-and-through, even at its most absurd. Ludivine Sagnier, years on from her starring role for Francois Ozon in “Swimming Pool,” plays a young television presenter named Gabrielle Deneige. “Neige” meaning snow, she, of course, is a weather girl at first. (Cue amused smirk.) François Berléand plays a world-weary but still games-playing novelist and flirt whose eyes wander despite a happy marriage. The May-November relationship grows more perverse, but she’s pulled in a second direction by the compulsive attentions of a naive and unstable heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, Paul (Benoît Magimel). Complications ensue, along with much biting satire of the haute bourgeois and sexual compulsions. Reportedly, Chabrol and his collaborators began with the Gilded Age scandal of the Stanford White murder in Manhattan. 110m. (Ray Pride)
Related Stories
Time Bandit: Gaspar Noé on "Irreversible: Straight Cut" Noé's brutal, crushing punishing-of-the-innocent “Irreversible" came out in 2002. Twenty-plus years later, we have the American release, which twists the story into a form that was never planned: linear, chronological order.
Talking Screens, August 19-25, 2022: The Joys of Girl Picture | The Importance of Alma's Rainbow | The Power of Prey In Chicago: Ayoka Chenzira's 1994 coming-of-age comedy-drama "Alma's Rainbow; the Finnish "Girl Picture;" one more chance to see Wong Kar-wai's "In The Mood For Love;" "Parting Glances" set during the early stages of the AIDS crisis with Steve Buscemi in an early lead; "Marie Antoinette;" "City Of God;" and Chicago Film Society brings back the rarely seen "Livin' Large." Reeling…
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
