La fille
coupée en deux
A mélange of the real and the hyperreal. An
aristocratic young blade competes with a roué novelist for the affections of
an infatuated young television weather girl. The two suitors have between them
an animus that is apparently never explained. So much for the premise. The
setting is present-day France, specifically the
This is primarily a film about
an idea, or a phenomenon, let us say, of competition between males for the hand
of a pretty girl. That being the case, it doesn’t entirely manage to embed its
thesis and observations in a narrative structure that maintains interest in its
own right. It doesn’t seem to matter to the filmmakers very much whether we
think that the chain of events depicted is plausible. Similarly, it may not
matter to you, the viewer, so long as the story of the young girl resonates
with you, (she is perhaps the only character in the piece with whom it might be possible to sympathise)
otherwise, my advice would be to bring a manicure kit to pass the time, because
you will be spending a lot of time examining your fingernails.
Maybe, if you are French, or
experienced in French culture, you can leave the nailfile at home. Perhaps the
characters are brilliantly observed features of French society, archetypes familiar
to all, and the insightful depictions will elicit many more “Bravos” than “Bofs”
from the cinephiles of Lyon and Paris. We would hope so. All that being said, the
story’s nationality becomes less of an issue, insofar as it is concerned with
the ability of the rich and aristocratic to live by their own rules, because
this kind of class difference exists in most societies : The rich are different, but that difference is
the same whereever you go.
French archetypes or not, the
principle characters are well drawn. The actor who plays the novelist Saint-Denis,
is well cast as the satyric author, and is well shot, particularly in the
more intimate scenes with the weather girl, where the effect is such that, were
the camera to pan back, we feel we would not be surprised to see a stocky pair
of goat legs to go along with his short barrel chest and hooked nose. His
psychotic young aristocratic rival is played for laughs, much of the time, and
has the kind of dress sense that is either supposed to suggest that his taste
is either completely lacking, or is on the cutting edge. The bisected girl of
the title learns a lot from her experiences, but only perhaps because she
starts from a position of extreme naivety. There are reasons to see this movie,
but they’re few and far between. Don’t forget the nailfile.