A master of the subtle 'Cut'

Though she is the weather girl, it's clear that Gabrielle is a smart, capable woman, definitely nobody's fool, though determined, as many young people are, to prove that "I'm not a kid anymore." Her weakness, as indicated by her last name ("of the snow"), is the purity and genuineness of her emotions, a character trait that in a better world than the one Chabrol has conjured up would be an advantage instead of a vulnerability.

Saint-Denis is not the only man who is seriously attracted to Gabrielle. She also catches the eye of Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), the mentally unstable heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, a man used to getting what he wants and a classic example of too much money and too little sense. But Gabrielle sees a kind of sweetness in Paul and, remarkably, his temperament reflects that when he is in her presence.

With his icy but somehow humane hauteur and his uncompromising narrative sense, Chabrol is the ideal person to investigate how Gabrielle fares in a heartless world where men control the levers of power. Chabrol, as he says himself, has created "an entirely chaste film whose characters are nonetheless haunted by the most perverse ideas." Gabrielle is more than a girl cut in two by this ambience, she's pulled every which way, a situation that the director investigates with the subtlety and complexity only a lifetime behind the camera can provide.

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kenneth.turan@latimes.com

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"A Girl Cut in Two." No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. Playing at the Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles. (310) 281-8223.