Accordind to the IMDb's listing, "La Fille coupée en deux" is the 69th Claude Chabrol's movie since 1958 and his first movie "Le beau Serge". 69 : with that number, Chabrol has managed to outnumber his old master : Alfred Hitchckock. And if all of his movies are not as good as Hitchcock's ones (none of them actually), I'm sure his last one would have amused Sir Alfred, for it's certainly one of his richest and intriguing movie since many years. I thing I've not been such intrigued by a Chabrol's since "L'enfer" in 1994 and its "No end" ending.
"La Fille coupée en deux" apparently deals with the same subject as "L'enfer" : love, and it's tragic consequences. But if "L'enfer" mostly dealt with madness and jealousy, "La fille..." approaches tragedy (but always in a cynical and almost funny way : Chabrol's universe is alway game-full) with the thematic of desire. It's the girl cut in half of the tittle that crystallizes this desire : Gabrielle Aurore Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), a young TV-host, desires an older and decadent writer Charles Saint Denis (the great François Berléand) and is desired by a young and crazy aristocrat (Benoît Magimel, it's the first time to me that he's quite acceptable in a movie). Chabrol plays for a time with his characters ans his spectators, who don't exactly know where he wants to bring us. But the game is interesting enough to be played.
This movie looks a lot like Woody Allen's "Scoop", with Ludivide Sagner as a french Scarlet Johanson. Chabrol even quotes Woody Allen in the movie, and shares with him the same tragic but insouciant thriller tone. But it's really the similarity with another director that stroke me with this movie. It's the first time that a Chabrol's movie strangely sometimes looks like a Brisseau's. Chabrol uses here, as in Brisseau's "Choses Secrètes", symbolic feminine mythological figures in order to develop his thematics ( it's particularly striking in the dichotomously representation of Charles Saint Denis' two woman : his white and angel-like wife, and his dark and mysterious Capucine). But it's mostly in the desire's representation in the strange club where Saint Denis likes to go that the two directors share some common points. Of course, whereas Brisseau is more than explicit, Chabrol doesn't show anything, but the moral fable aspect of the movie, with a Hitchcock's influence in the way Chabrol "suspenses" the desire representation, makes this movie quiet near to Brisseau's universe.
Anyway, it's been a very long time since a Chabrol's movie didn't appear to me as rich, original and surprising as this one.
