"A Girl Cut in Two": A titillating American scandal gets the French treatment

Near the end of Claude Chabrol's elegantly mordant exploration of twisted relationships, "A Girl Cut in Two," a veteran lawyer says he's fascinated by the romantic triangle at its center.

He's hardly alone. Chabrol and Cécile Maistre's script is an updated version of a 1906 New York scandal that was once dubbed "the crime of the century." It's been filmed twice before, as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" (1955) and as part of "Ragtime" (1981), which was later transformed into a prizewinning Broadway musical.

Earlier this year, it was the subject of a well-researched book, "American Eve," which the author, Paula Uruburu, used to evoke the bewitching nature of glamour girl Evelyn Nesbit, who married a jealous playboy after a public affair with a philandering architect.

Transporting Nesbit's story to 21st-century France involved a few changes. The architect has become a vain, best-selling novelist (François Berléand). Nesbit, who became famous as a model and a chorus girl, has been turned into a television weather girl (Ludivine Sagnier) with talk-show ambitions.

But her husband, played by Benoît Magimel, is essentially the same possessive brat who twitches at the thought that she's slept with another man. He's handsome, he's persistent and he's alleged to have charm, but in every version of this story, her decision to accept his proposal of marriage seems like an appalling case of poor judgment.

In Chabrol's version, she's very much on the rebound when she decides to marry. The novelist has ended their affair in an especially cruel manner, and when his toxic rival turns up and fills a void, she doesn't seem to mind that he's a stalker. She's "a girl cut in two," still infatuated with the man who rejected her, and Chabrol makes the title literal when she becomes part of a magic act in the final scene.

More than a century later, this is still a juicy story, and the actors don't back away from its more hysterical flourishes. Berléand convinces as an ex-lover who can't quite let go (his off-and-on behavior causes one exasperated character to declare "that's too subtle for me"). Sagnier, the shameless beauty from "Swimming Pool," also does a wry job of shifting gears.

Still, the movie belongs to Magimel, who brings a nervous energy to the playboy husband that helps to make him the most believable — and scariest — character. Whenever he's on-screen, Chabrol makes his most persuasive argument that this material hasn't dated at all.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com