Review #964: 'The Girl Cut in Two' (2007)

The Girl Cut in Two was one of the great Claude Chabrol's final films in an astonishing career that span 58 years before his death in 2010. The former Cahiers du Cinema journalist was famously a huge fan of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, writing about the Master of Suspense at length for the magazine before Chabrol's own work weaved together Hitchcock's sublime blend of melodrama and tension with Chabrol's own French New Wave (his debut Le Beau Serge is widely considered the first). This 2007 effort does much of the same, but the emphasis is more on the melodrama for the main bulk of the film and it lacks the New Wave edge of his early, greater works.

Pretty young weather-girl Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier) catches the eye of the rich and famous author Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) when the latter is interviewed at the TV station she works for. Charles performs a book signing at Gabrielle's mother's book store, where he is confronted by the filthy-rich heir to a pharmaceutical company, Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), while Charles invites Gabrielle to accompany him to an auction. The clearly unhinged Paul also lusts after Gabrielle, and begins an aggressive pursuit of her while she is off falling in love with the arrogant and pretentious (and married) Charles.

Sagnier is particularly lovely as a character who may have come across as spoiled and selfish if not handled quite so delicately. There are fewer things quite as uncomfortable to watch than a nice girl caught up in a love triangle with two absolute arseholes, and Berleand and Magimel certainly bring a complexity, and even flashes of sympathy, to their loathsome man-children. Gabrielle is pulled back and forth between the two - the metaphor of the title also plays out almost literally in a slightly surreal final scene - and this goes on for quite a while. It gradually builds up to the inevitable and the film begins to feel more juicy, however by the time this happens there aren't quite enough minutes remaining to fully explore its full potential. Certainly engaging but one of the French auteurs lesser works.


Directed by: Claude Chabrol
Starring: Ludivine Sagnier, Benoît Magimel, François Berléand, Mathilda May
Country: France/Germany

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #319: 'The Devil's Double' (2011)

Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper) is a patriotic Iraqi soldier who finds himself brought in by Uday Hussein (also Cooper), a former classmate and son of Saddam to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Uday wants him to become his body double to protect him from potentially dangerous situations, and make appearances while Uday indulges in women, drink and drugs. Latif refuses, only to be tortured and beaten until he agrees. After undergoing some minor plastic surgery and given some fake teeth, Latif shadows Uday and realises he is an absolute psychopath, raping and murdering women as well as torturing anyone who challenges or opposes him. Uday's mistress Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier), tired of Uday's unpredictable nature and wild behaviour, shows interest in Latif, and the two start a dangerous affair.

The story of Latif Yahia has been dubbed dubious by various investigative journalists due to inconsistencies in his stories and claims by associates of Uday Hussein's that he never used body doubles. That aside, it makes for a quite fascinating story, if a not wholly believable one. Instead of fashioning a serious film about one of the key figures in the troubled and violent recent history of Iraq, director Lee Tamahori (whose recent films include the shitty Bond film Die Another Day (2002) and Nicolas Cage vehicle Next (2007)) has made a gangster film. It plays out like Scarface in Baghdad, and is full of violence, drugs and women, and all but ignores the political and social aspects. It's the main problem with the film, as although this has the potential to be a very good film, the execution is that seen a thousand times before in the gangster genre. In the hands of someone like David Fincher or Michael Mann, this could have been something much more.

However, the film has a trump card in the form of lead Dominic Cooper, who juggles dual roles with apparent ease. I've never been his biggest fan (he's hardly been stretched in his career), but he shows here that he has leading man qualities. Although his portrayal of Uday is wildly over-the-top to the point of a cartoon character sometimes, it's clearly as the director intended, and he switches from the brooding Latif to the psychopathic Uday effortlessly. So whether you believe the story or not (I don't), it makes for an entertaining, if deeply flawed, film, and Uday Hussein proves a terrifying madman, especially given that he was very real (before US forces killed him in 2003).


Directed by: Lee Tamahori
Starring: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Raad Rawi
Country: Belgium/Netherlands

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie