‘A Girl Cut in Two’

Claude Chabrol’s “A Girl Cut in Two” is unquestionably the work of a master. As well it should be, given that the celebrated French filmmaker has produced more than 50 features in half a century of directing. If you don’t believe all that experience can come in handy, this involving and intelligent film will change your mind. Starting with a turn-of-the-century American romantic triangle, Chabrol has transferred the story to contemporary France and turned it into a study of the confounding nature of the human heart, of the way innocence and corruption can be at such devastating cross purposes that, as one character puts it, “love is the only crime that gives a life sentence.”