The woman divided in two

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Movie
German title The woman divided in two
Original title La Fille coupée en deux
Country of production Germany , France
original language French
Publishing year 2007
length 115 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Claude Chabrol
script Claude Chabrol
Cécile Maistre
production Patrick Godeau
music Matthieu Chabrol
camera Eduardo Serra
cut Monique Fardoulis
occupation

The film The woman divided into two (original title: La Fille coupée en deux ) is a thriller by the French director Claude Chabrol . According to him, the private life and the murder of New York architect Stanford White in 1906 served as the starting point for the narrative. The title can also be interpreted as a personality split between innocence and corruption.

action

The young and attractive Gabrielle works as a weather fairy for a television station in Lyon. When she meets the successful author Charles Saint-Denis, she begins a passionate affair with the married older man. For Gabrielle, Charles is great love. Little does she suspect that she is only an affair for the notorious cheater and that he does not even think about ending his marriage to Dona. Unhappy because he was abandoned, Gabrielle comforts herself in the arms of the wealthy heir Paul Gaudens. When Charles learns of the upcoming marriage, he seeks Gabrielle to offer her a resumption of the affair, which she indignantly refuses. Paul, meanwhile, proves to be unstable. He is increasingly plagued by jealousy, especially when Gabrielle tells him details of their love affair. He shoots Charles in public.

In order to obtain relief for Paul, his bourgeois mother asks Gabrielle to reveal intimate details of her relationship with Charles to the court. Gabrielle finally makes a statement to help Paul - despite the inevitable scandal that goes with it. Paul receives a milder verdict, but Gabrielle finds that the family suddenly cut off contact with her and Paul filed for divorce. It wasn't until her uncle offered her a job as an assistant in his magic show that she found her smile in the spotlight.

Award

Reviews

The portrayal of the rich son by Benoît Magimel was worth mentioning to several critics. The Austrian newspapers Presse and Standard praised him for giving a "delicious Schnösel batch" and skillfully exaggerating his role. For the film service , he played a crazy but amusing figure.

The taz found that Chabrol, who celebrated the bourgeoisie like attacking, had submitted a film that was “both elegant and cool, playful and philosophical, intelligent and light.” According to the press , it has been “probably Chabrol's blackest comedy” since one day Quarter of a century that developed a perfect image of a ridiculous, perverse civil society by means of representative figures. And in the opinion of Cinema , the director is still making refreshingly young films: "Chabrol could now stage such stories in his sleep, but films anything but snore: As usual, he delivers nasty character studies and cutting dialogues." Viewed as an experimental arrangement told with intellectual sharpness The world the very "classic" film. Chabrol does not show differentiated characters, but prefabricated types, which has the advantage that the tragedy appears all the more inevitable to the audience.

The judgment of the Tagesspiegel (“one of Chabrol's weaker works”) is much harsher : after half a century, Chabrol's audience is tired and this film is one of the weaker ones in his oeuvre. “It doesn't even fail in a great way. But you become thinking, so wide awake. […] And optically, as is so often the case with Chabrol, it is of flawlessly cool elegance and perfection. ”The event of the film is Ludivine Sagnier, but the alleged charisma of the old writer on the young woman is incomprehensible.

The film-dienst finds the routine staging of the bourgeois-affluent milieu to be atmospherically dense and erotically excited , but the characters' motivations and feelings remained vague assertions. The standard criticizes something similar : the feelings seemed as if written, qualities were only revealed “in the little things: the gimmicks with names and bon mots, gestures and costumes.” Chabrol did not think of anything fundamentally new about his eternal themes around the bourgeoisie.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Der Standard , January 8, 2008, p. 32, by Isabella Reicher: In the paradise of intriguers, can be found in the newspaper archive .
  2. ^ A b c Die Presse , January 9, 2008, by Christoph Huber: Niedertracht zum Niederknien .
  3. ↑ film-dienst No. 1/2008, p. 23, by Esther Buss.
  4. ↑ taz , January 10, 2008, p. 24, short review not signed: “The two-part woman” by Claude Chabrol .
  5. ↑ Cinema No. 1/2008, p. 60, by Karl-Heinz Schäfer.
  6. ↑ Die Welt , January 10, 2008, p. 29, by Cosima Lutz: Angel of Innocence in Hell .
  7. ↑ Die Zeit , January 10, 2008, by Maximilian Probst : Pretty goldfish in the shark tank .
  8. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel , January 10, 2008, p. 25, by Kerstin Decker: Redeem the weather frog!
  9. ↑ film-dienst No. 1/2008, p. 23, by Esther Buss.