Its impact is weakened by a limp ending and a sense that it all adds up to rather less than the sum of its parts.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Arguably, A Girl Cut in Two is more fun around the edges, as an assemblage of bizarre supporting characters and throwaway comic bits, than it is down the middle, as a classic French morality tale.
A Girl Cut in Two is a spry piece of work. Chabrol uses this sinister clown show as a means to puncture the media world's hot-air balloons--as well as to highlight the hypocrisies of his favorite target, the haute bourgeoisie.
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
Velvety storytelling still feels more thawed-out than heated.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Claude Chabrol's capacity to make shopworn material seem almost new is especially evident in this 2007 drama, which he cowrote with his stepdaughter, Cecile Maistre.
While not a classic, this is a pleasantly disturbing, nominally voyeuristic romp in the territory Chabrol knows best.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
A dry, thoroughly modern reminder that while mores change, human nature doesn't.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
An erotically charged, beautifully directed story of a woman preyed upon by different men and her own warring desires.
Chabrol develops the inevitable confrontation between the two men like a car wreck in slow motion, and getting there takes a little more work than it should; the film takes the form of a thriller, but it doesn't have the pace of one.
Chabrol, who is often called the French Hitchcock because of his intricate thrillers, is approaching the big 8-0, yet he continues to do quality work, as shown by A Girl Cut in Two.