Toronto: 'La Fille Coupee en Deux' ('The Girl Cut In Two')

Two distinct types of upper-class rot have their way with poor Ludivine Sagnier in Claude Chabrol's chilly, brisk new film, written by Chabrol with Cecile Maistre. The beautiful Sagnier, a sunny blonde for this picture, stars as a TV weathergirl who falls hard for much older writer Charles Saint-Denis when he shows up at the station for a chat show. Saint-Denis, a dissembling libertine of no small means (played with droll savoir-faire by Francois Berleand) develops a small obsession for Sagnier's amusingly named Gabrielle Deneige himself, but as he ruthlessly demonstrates, it's nothing he can't handle. At the same time, Gabrielle is pursued by rich young rotter Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel, who shows real stones in wearing the character's ridiculous hairstyle without visible embarassment). How both these guys and those around them use their power to screw Gabrielle over is the real subject of this film, which is shot and cut with the ineluctability of a mathematical proof. A few of the other viewers I spoke about it with were brought up short by the film, as they expected, or hoped, more of a study of Sagnier's character. But although she is the film's focal point, the picture's about how she's acted upon rather than how she acts, or even what she thinks; her core is deliberately veiled, I think. But if Gabrielle Deneige never becomes wholly known to us, Sagnier's guileless performance makes her much more than an object.