"A Girl Cut in Two," the latest film by Claude Chabrol, tells the tale of a woman in love with the wrong man. Who marries another wrong man. And whose sex determines not so much her choices, but her fate.

As TV weatherperson Gabrielle Deneige, Ludivine Sagnier ("Swimming Pool") is coy to the point of implosion and sexual to the point of explosion. She catches the eye of both the older author Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) and the unstable Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel).

Charles has his own peculiarities. Some are sexual. Others include his ability to philander while maintaining his devoted relationship with his gorgeous wife, Dona (Valeria Cavalli), and his platonic relationship with the spectacular Capucine (Mathilda May).

Capucine is epic; Dona is womanly and dauntingly intellectual. Gabrielle, by contrast, is a girlish sexpot, a sucker for the intimidating mind and experience of Charles, who clearly finds it easier to indulge his ego in the warm bath of youth than to rise to the challenge posed by a woman who is his equal.

Chabrol, always a woman's director in the fashion of Hitchcock, uses the true story of Evelyn Nesbit as a framework for his film. In June 1906, Nesbit's lunatic husband, Harry K. Thaw, shot Stanford White on the roof garden of the original Madison Square Garden. Dubbed "the girl in the red velvet swing" (an allusion to one of White's more idiosyncratic sexual fetishes), she had been seduced by White, abused by Thaw, vilified in the press and ultimately, after testifying on Thaw's behalf, cut off by his mother without a dime.

For all its charisma, "A Girl Cut in Two" lacks a certain depth. Gabrielle is too smart to be this dumb; Charles is a supposed genius who can't get out of his own emotional way. Paul is a schizophrenic, whose flamboyance is simply laughable. Although all this makes "A Girl Cut in Two" a minor work by Chabrol, it would be a major work by most directors, and one that's still fascinating even in its flaws.

-- John Anderson (Sept. 19, 2008)

Contains sexual content, vulgarity and adult themes.