GIRL CUT IN TWO & FEAR(S) OF THE DARK

http://www.filmmonitor.org/
www.myspace.com/filmmonitor

Legendary French director Claude Chabrol’s new film, A Girl Cut In Two, is loosely based on the 1906 murder of New York architect Stanford White. The title character, a young and beautiful TV weather girl Gabrielle played by Ludivine Sagnier, is torn between her affair with an accomplished married writer (Francois Berleand) and her relationship with a mentally unstable wealthy heir (Benoit Magimel).

Many critics have hailed the new film as a solid and suspenseful criticism on class relations by the director known as the “French Hitchcock.” It is clear, just as the film’s title indicates, that Gabrielle is pull by the two rich men whose love is clearly rooted in their own self-absorbed egos. The literature-quoting Charles is unabashedly self-righteous about his womanizing ways while the childishly unstable Paul has never failed to get what he wants (nor has he worked a day in his life). The key to the story is how Gabrielle handles the power dynamic between her and the two infatuated suitors with her sex appeal, which eventually becomes a two-way sword for this innocent young woman in an increasingly dangerous situation, yet the film ends up too bland and average with its unsurprising developments.

The most interesting thing in A Girl Cut In Two is the deliberate absence of sex and nudity in the seemingly steamy story. Chabrol wants to leave it up to the imagination of the viewers. It sounds clever and daring, but it is hard to say if this tactic actually galvanizes a film with an age-old scandalous love triangle that sounds all too familiar for the viewers of 2008.

I can respect a critic who offers a different opinion, but I can’t respect a critic who offers nothing but a synopsis. As a humble writer for the little Film Monitor, I am in no position to step on another writer’s turf, but I can’t resist telling you that New York Post’s V.A. Musetto wrote some of the most pointless reviews in recent memory. Aside from summarizing the film, Musetto throws in his two cents (and not a penny more!) on A Girl Cut In Two by calling it “a stylish and intelligent melodrama” without any dedicating a single word on why he thinks the film is good. That’s just flat out lazy. Why does anyone need to waste his/her reading the review when the writer's not even trying?



Another pathetic Musetto review brings me to the next film, Fear(s) of The Dark. It is a collection of animated shorts done by graphic artists and animators from the U.S. and Europe. V.A. Musetto claims that “there isn’t a dud in the 10 shorts,” but after counting over and over again by rewinding my screener, I still couldn’t find ten shorts. Unlike Musetto, I’ve only seen five short stories plus the computer graphics intervals in between. These shorts all share the subject of fear but they all vary in style. American cartoonist Charles Burns’ story of an insect-collecting nerd who is smitten by the prospect of a girlfriend is the best in the bunch. Burns, who is the author of Black Hole, translates his distinctive black-and-white graphic novel style perfectly with the help of computer animation. Marie Caillou’s segment of a Japanese girl with a nightmare about a dead samurai looks too much like something made with Adobe Flash, which I wouldn’t mind watching on Adult Swim but not in a theater. The rest of the bunch is aesthetically innovative, but they don’t provoke much fear and thrill.

Is it possible that Musetto made a typo when he claimed there were ten shorts in his review? Possibly. Why would I imply that he wrote a review without watching the film?

FEAR(S) OF THE DARK opens November 21 at the Angelika Film Center.