1st watched 12/18/2011 – 4 out of 10(Dir-Claude Chabrol): Un-satisfying semi-romantic drama from France doesn't explore the characters enough to help the audience understand the decision-making of the main characters. The story revolves around a girl who starts the movie as a weather reporter for a local TV station, but isn't initially the central character. Initially, the central character is an older well-known author that seems to pretty much have his life together, although it seems a little ho-hum. He becomes attracted to the weather girl, and her to him and they become lovers. He's married and she's a younger single woman living with her mother. A spoiled rich kid then meets and becomes obsessed with the girl. She doesn't really show any interest in him, but after a spat with the author(and while he's on an extended business trip) – she marries the spoiled dude!! This was obviously not a good decision because she never really was attracted to him, but she either wanted the security or wanted to make the author jealous. The younger man turns out to be pretty loony and an incident involving him turns the whole story around. I won't give away what happened in case you want to watch the movie, but it makes the woman's life totally a bummer. So, this twisted love triangle of a movie where everyone makes pretty bad decisions -- should have been a little more revealing so the audience could understand their crazy decisions. Overall this made for a pretty bland and lifeless movie with unfortunately the best scene coming at the very end. That is never a good sign and it isn't with this one. Skip it unless you just what to read subtitles for an hour and a half.
... View MoreThe actress in the movie (I mean the young chick lady) is gorgeous,but out of that,there is really nothing to say.this is the typical awful French movie you can image,they talk,talk,talk,endless dinner,food full of mouths,wine,dreary boring and superficial,and the sex scenes are very conventional to make you cry which is disappointed me most.usually French chick are very plead to expose their body to the camera.it reminds me another film called Lifeforce made about a double decade ago,in that movie Mathilda May(also has a role in this film) is almost fully nude from start to the end,at that time,Mathilda May looks so young and so perfect,she's like the most wonderful thing in the universe,and that is the movie you must have seen.Back to this movie,if you are horny guys looking for young good looking girl,it's a good film.if you're looking for some really good story,it's a bad film,after all it's a bad film,so don't bother you to watch this film,120 minutes long is a torture.
... View More"A Girl Cut In Two" is the kind of movie that requires a lot of patience from its audience (it moves slowly and runs long), without really rewarding them for it at the end. Listed by IMDb as a drama/thriller, it is basically a drama about a young weather girl (and later TV show host) caught in two parallel relationships with a middle-aged writer and a rich heir about her age, with the "thriller" part (such as it is) coming into play only in the last 20 minutes. One of the main problems with the film is that the viewer can see right away that neither of these relationships is going to work out - the older man is married and just looking for cheap thrills, the younger man acts borderline psychotic right from the start - and you wonder how the heroine, who seems fairly smart in most ways, can be so naive as to not see that these two men are unworthy of her time. Perhaps the two most likable characters - the heroine's uncle and the young man's little sister - have very little screen time. The film is very well-acted, especially by Ludivine Sagnier and Francois Berléand, but ultimately it is a minor work for someone of Claude Chabrol's great reputation. (**)
... View MoreAt this point in Claude Chabrol's career one might expect him to cut loose and do something just totally crazy and not to give a hoot about his consistent style as a director. A Girl Cut in Two, for better or worse, is still disciplined and carefully constructed and directed, and maybe because of this once in a while suffers from not wavering in its approach; it's kind of like That Almost Obscure Object of Desire. But within its set terms the film is enjoyable and even has a kind of biting underlying wit to the proceedings. I would think this film might appeal more to the middle or lower class as opposed to upper class and wealthy as the former can perhaps relish in this tumultuous love life of this weather girl Gabrielle (very beautiful Ludivine Sagnier, kind of a prettier Chloe Sevigny) and the classic "turning the men's worlds upside down" formula. As for fans of Chabrol, and this goes without saying it's not a great film, it's a sign that, like Woody Allen, he isn't going anywhere and still has some ideas kicking around.It's about the effect Gabrielle has on a man twice her age, novelist Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand in a quietly powerful and thoughtful performance), and a spoiled and possibly emotionally combustible guy more her age, Paul (Benoit Magimel, very good in that his performance is narrowed to being this creepy person). She really is head over heels for the older man, who sadly is also (happily) married to his wife of many years, while Paul does all but wave a sign saying "pick me, I'm free, pick me" (with the line "I get what I always want" crossed out save for when he's drunk). It's like a double Catch 22 situation, leading up to a marriage, a murder, and other occurrences. Chabrol presents all of this in what appears to be a straightforward style, which usually suits him best, and within this comes out the moral complexities.This could be enough for a decent movie, if maybe a little slight in the mostly bourgeois atmosphere, but Chabrol heaps on some social commentary to boot: it's not just Paul but also Charles that put up a kind of front of complacency that is hard to crack for Gabrielle. It's slightly playful, mostly harsh, but always controlled satire, not of the laugh-out-loud kind but where one might chuckle or raise an eyebrow at a plot point or scene of specific acting. It's an interesting approach which isn't entirely effective but never makes it boring. A Girl Cut in Two is acted just as it should (Caroline Silhol particularly gives a deliciously icy performance as Paul's mother), and is written and directed with a knowledge of its audience. 7.5/10
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