The Girl Cut in Two

Even if you're a pathetic old git like me who still dreams of some gorgeous young thing falling at your feet, don't waste your time on this distasteful nonsense.

I tried to like this a little bit but started drifting off very soon after it started. Lots of pretty rich middle class people and arty stuff... zzzz. Fraid i gave up before I could see what it was about.

There’s nothing like an unusual title to draw the viewers in, and how cross I am with myself for falling for it once again. This film really is a load of pretentious drivel with some dire performances to boot.

The story is apparently based upon a true event of some twenty or more years ago. Surely, in the original happening, the people involved must have been more interesting.

Young actress Ludivine Sagnier plays Gabrielle, a pertly attractive weather girl who reminded me of the young Jennifer Aniston. Into the frame creeps a most unpleasant individual called Charles Saint-Denis , an award-winning author, played by Francois Berleand, who takes a fancy to the young lady and entices her to his lair…or den of iniquity, as we later discover.

Charles is sixtyish, grey-haired and not even the slightest bit attractive and the love scenes between them are not exactly convincing. Far from setting the screen alight, they completely fail to ignite. So it comes as rather a surprise to find that Gabrielle is actually in love with him. Whatever does she see in him? He is plainly up to no good, and in any case, already has a devoted wife and an agent/publisher with whom he appears to be on more than friendly terms.

Enter Gabrielle’s possible saviour, in the form of a very rich young man called Paul, who wants to marry her at first sight and without even a sample of what he’s in for. Dear me. Is this Barbara Cartland revisited? Or the ghost of Marquise de Sade popping up once again in someone’s script.

There is almost no good acting in this movie. Ludivine Sagnier seems too inexperienced to hold the film together, and Francois Berleand doesn’t even try. Benouit Magumel as Paul, the flamboyant young suitor, tries hard, but sadly his flam was not sufficiently buoyant. ( A memorable face, ‘tho.)

Of the entire cast, I would say that only Paul’s mother, played by a woman who looks like Michele Pfieffer but whose name I don’t know, had any intention of doing a little serious acting.

Completely bananas, the whole thing. An outdated cliché of a French film.

I was in the mood to watch a French film so this certainly didn't dissapoint, as it pretty much conforms to every sterotype of French cinema. Good looking woman falls in love with older man, but a younger man loves her. Er, that's about it really, but you know what you're getting!

I had to switch this off about half an hour in as the pretension and aloofness of this film was beginning to boil my wee.

Ludivine Sagnier should know better!

If you like your French films to be pointless character dramas populated by dullards and idiots in denial (mainly men in this film), by all means rent away...