A Girl Cut in Two

• directed bt claude chabrol

Leopold, a smug, still-hunky 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces fresh-faced, carrot-topped 19-year-old Franz who swiftly moves into his bachelor pad. Their cozy relationship soon sours as Leopold, a kind of gone-to-seed Dirk Bogarde, turns cranky and argumentative. When Franz's buxom blond girlfriend surfaces, and then Leopold's elegant and enigmatic ex, things get funnier, steamier and a lot more complicated. Set in Germany in the '70s, and brilliantly adapted from a play by the great R.W. Fassbinder, by one of France's most daring and innovative new directors, WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS is fraught with intimations of violence, betrayal, and sexual shenanigans run amok.A SECRET follows the saga of a Jewish family in post-World War II Paris. Francois, a solitary, imaginative child, invents for himself a brother as well as the story of his parents past. ! But on his fifteenth birthday, he discovers a dark family secret that ties his family s history to the Holocaust and shatters his illusions forever. Adapted from Philippe Grimbert`s celebrated truth-inspired novel MEMORY.SWIMMING POOL - DVD MovieIn terms of alluring female nudity, Swimming Pool shows a lot, but it's what remains concealed that gives this erotic thriller a potent, voyeuristic charge. With his Hitchcockian handling of secrets and lies, prolific French director François Ozon reunites with his Under the Sand star, Charlotte Rampling, to tell a seductive tale of murder and complicity, beginning when British mystery novelist Sarah Morton (Rampling) seeks peace and relaxation at her publisher's French villa, only to find his brash, sexually liberated daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) arriving shortly thereafter to disrupt her solitary reverie. What begins as mutual annoyance turns into something more sinister and duplicitous, alternating between Jul! ie's predatory sex with men and Sarah's observant, perhaps jea! lous fas cination. These two women, generations apart, share in Ozon's delicate dance of trust, curiosity, and gradual understanding, until a twist ending that forces you to reevaluate everything you've seen. Only then will the mysteries of Swimming Pool be fully and tantalizingly revealed. (Note: The unrated version contains full-frontal nudity that's been edited from the rated version. In both versions, the overall plot is not affected.) --Jeff Shannonblockbuster exclusive dvd