Toronto and NYFF preview. A Girl Cut in Two.

"A Girl Cut in Two isn't exactly a crackling suspense film, though it does contain some hairpin twists, and it hints at a world of secret deviance dwelling behind elegantly carved doors," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "It's mainly a take-off-your-coat-and-stay-a-while piece of storytelling, where all the characters and their motivations get revealed in due course, and in the meantime the audience is expected to ponder the deeper meaning of all the dualities the movie keeps running past us.... It's just another good Chabrol film to throw on the pile."

Updated through 9/24.

"In 115 calm, non-judgmental minutes, Chabrol tells the story of a TV weathergirl (Ludivine Sagnier) whose affair with an aging, celebrated writer (François Berléand) somehow leads her into the arms of a young, possibly psychotic rich boy (Benoît Magimel)," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "There are no moral messages here - when has Chabrol ever hit us over the head with a stick? - but only human animals elegantly chewing off their own legs."

"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," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny.

"A Girl Cut in Two is almost documentary-like in its examination of bourgeois rituals of wining and dining and modes of self-preservation, but its intriguing bits of psychological observation are not engineered into a particularly sensible or pulsating whole," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "Paling next to Raul Ruiz's nutty Chabrolian parody That Day, the film is only as artful, amusing, and thoughtful as the last Woody Allen picture."

Earlier: Reviews from Venice.

Update, 9/22: "The movie is gloriously 'French,' using the serpentine and voluptuous language as a point of attack that stratifies all lines of demarcation about honor, masculinity, sexual role playing and independence," writes Patrick Z McGavin at Stop Smiling. "Chabrol remains the most acid-toned of the original Nouvelle Vague directors; he's a brisk and incisive portraitist of hypocrisy and social mores that balanced with a visual imagination that gives the movie's title a particular snap."

Update, 9/24: "Traditional wisdom holds Chabrol's constant theme to be withering critiques of the hypocritical, mendacious bourgeoisie, yet Chabrol's obviously been one for a while..., and Girl hedges its bets," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler. "The first hour is as conventional and sharp as any of Chabrol's early work; hardly a scene goes by without awkward sexual tension... and Chabrol pushes things along speedily. It's like a mean-spirited screwball comedy. The second hour slacks back into Chabrol's recent passive-aggressive house style, and the merger isn't entirely satisfying. But Girl picks up steam in its finale, meaning it's an awkward merger of Chabrol's old and new styles that won't alienate as many viewers as his recent work, but not as formally unified either."

Posted by dwhudson at September 21, 2007 9:31 AM