Text size:

'A Girl Cut in Two'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

September 5, 2008

Sex, murder, insanity, perversity - " A Girl Cut in Two" has it all, yet it stands as a singularly classy and sophisticated drama. It's erotic without showing skin, brutal but never bloody. It's not that French director Claude Chabrol, at 78, is a prude; the depravities here seem all the more shocking having gone unseen.

The story, a loose update of the 1906 scandal that surrounded the American architect Stanford White, centers on Gabrielle Deniege (Ludivine Sagnier, of 2003's "Swimming Pool"), a hottie television weathergirl who catches the eye of Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berléand), a famous novelist. He's world-weary, though still energetic enough to juggle several women, and Gabrielle becomes one of them. A mere fraction of his age, she denies him nothing, even as he flip-flops from kindly father figure to sexual sadist.

Pining for Gabrielle from the sidelines is a flamboyant and mentally unstable young playboy named Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel, who handily steals the movie with a combination of little-boy charm and feverish rage). Paul provides the movie with its violent climax, but the real brutality is yet to come.

"A Girl Cut in Two," much like Woody Allen's " Vicky Cristina Barcelona," is a masterful film that seems somehow effortless. Chabrol seems to have done the hardest work before the filming - writing a fine script (with his longtime assistant, Cécile Maistre) and choosing a cast with a connoisseur's eye. And the tight editing by Monique Fardoulis aggressively pushes the story forward to its end, when the film's figurative title becomes almost - but not quite - literal.

(unrated)

PLOT An innocent girl is caught between a jaded older lover and a rich but unstable young suitor.

CAST Ludivine Sagnier, Francois Berléand, Benoit Magimel

LENGTH 1:50

PLAYING AT Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington

BOTTOM LINE Stellar acting and a fine script turn this tabloid-style saga into a classy, sophisticated drama.