Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier) works at a TV station in Lyons, France, as a weather forecaster. Her boss thinks she can definitely go on to bigger and better things in the media world. At the bookstore where her mother Marie (Marie Bunel) works, she meets the successful writer Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) who is urbane and twice her age. Gabrielle falls in love with him even though she knows that he has a wife (Valeria Cavalli) who has tolerated his affairs for 25 years. His editor, Capucine Jamet (Mathilda May), manages his professional appearances.

Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), a spoiled heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, falls in love with Gabrielle. He is an irresponsible young man who thinks that he can do whatever he wants thanks to his money. Paul hates Charles and is very jealous of his affair with Gabrielle. When the writer eventually casts her aside after introducing her to a private brothel, Paul proposes marriage, and the distraught Gabrielle agrees. His high society mother (Caroline Silhol) can't tolerate her son's choice for a wife.

Veteran French filmmaker Claude Chabrol has a ball dissecting the illusions of love in the magical worlds of publishing, television, and the world of old money. Francois is a smooth operator as the libertine Charles and Magimel struts his stuff as the rich brat who acts on his worst impulses. The screenplay for The Girl Cut in Two was inspired by the New York murder of womanizer Stanford White in 1906.

Screened at the 45th New York Film Festival, October 2007.