SCHED: SF International Film Fest '08

Links: Event Details/ Who's going | Original Source
About: Claude Chabrol has been at the top of his game for so many years we're beginning to suspect it's not a game after all but serious, wicked sport. A Girl Cut in Two has a contemporary setting (almost all his films do) but a period mood; we can feel the ghost of Stendhal in the entrenched class warfare (or is it class trench-warfare?) at play as Chabrol moves his characters around an exquisite social setting. Francois Berleand stars as a jaded novelist and too happily married ladies man whose latest conquest is poor but honest TV weathergirl Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier). At once naive and unstoppable, Gabrielle doesn't need to be convinced to enter into a sordid May-September relationship with a celebrated member of the intelligentsia. However, tugging at her other arm with the pull of the entire haute bourgeoisie is young Paul (Benoit Magimel), the cute but dangerously schizophrenic scion of a Lyon pharmaceutical magnate. What's a girl to do? Chabrol solves the problem in his usual methodical way, ending with a set piece worthy of Guy Maddin. Appropriately, the story takes as its starting point a famous Gilded Age crime of passion, the murder of Madison Square Garden architect and notorious womanizer Stanford White.-Judy Bloch Sponsored by TV5Monde, French Cultural Services, French-American Cultural Society and Air France.
Also playing on: Thu 5/1, 8:45 pm | Sun 5/4, 6:00 pm
Tags: world cinema