Betty Blue

The Betty of the title is like a shooting star; she runs hot and bright, but she's burning up. _Betty Blue_ chronicles a torrid affair between a waitress and a handyman, initially in a broken down seaside resort. Betty is both passionate and unstable, almost childlike, and initially it is outsiders who bear the brunt of her anger - the piggish owner of the seaside bungalows, for example, or the playboy publisher who rejects Zorg's novel.

However, as Betty becomes more unstable and begins her descent into insanity, this rage is increasingly turned inward into self-punishing and self-mutilating actions. The same intensity that drives her sexuality and her love for Zorg is, ultimately, her downfall.

Over the course of the movie, which is quite long (I saw the 178 minute director's cut), Zorg goes to increasingly frantic lengths both to please Betty and to protect her from herself. In this regard, certainly, Betty and Zorg are almost identical, both going to extremes, in their own ways, to defend their relationship from outside interference.

As well as providing a narrative that may be read and interpreted on several levels, _Betty Blue_ is an exceptionally beautiful film in terms of cinematography and mise en scene. Colour is used to breathtaking effect - the blue floors of the piano shop, the yellow car, the yellow lighting which makes it seem as though, regardless of time, it's always afternoon twilight. Landscapes, city scenes, interiors are all set up and filmed beautifully.

A tale of love, sex and obsession not to be missed.

37.2 Le Matin(Betty Blue) is a brilliant piece of work. Jean-Huhues Anglades' natural performance as Zorg in this easy going - take life as it comes story line makes you want to see more of him. To see someone you love violently erode away is painful and Robins' beautiful camera work with the slow tracking makes the visual experience stimulating. The slow pace of this tale of love and friendship is no cause of concern. Very french, the nudity is handled beautifully. The subtle use of the color yellow is interesting. The film makes you want to be free to live a life of impulse and simplicity. A must watch for the film aficionado.

There are two versions of this movie. One is short version and the other is lengthy uncut version. Short version is just another romantic drama movie. Nothing special. But the uncut version is a real masterpiece. The experience of watching this movie is not like watching it as a spectator; but as a participant. If the actors felt happy, we feel it. If they are crying, we too are crying. If they made love, we feel the pleasure of it. Such strong acting. It is the experience of watching the actual lives of two people through a secret window.

A happy-go-lucky odd job man (Jean-Hugues Anglade as Zorg) falls in to a relationship with a slightly unhinged -- but very sexy/sexual -- French teenager named Betty (Béatrice Dalle in her debut role.)

There are very few films that are totally different from anything you have seen before. While sexually explicit -- it is far from objectionable because the two parties are in love and passionate about one another.

Betty Blue/37°2 le matin doesn't really fall in to any one category -- going from farce to tragedy, stopping off at oddball. The two leads are amazing in their chemistry -- they really do look and act like they are in love. Also what an amazing debut by the Dalle, although her later life has shown that she has plenty of the Betty Blue in her for real.

(Was this script written with her in mind? -- my search for the truth goes on.)

Starting the film with a sex scene sets the film off on the totally the wrong foot. While the film is about sex -- and at times sexual repression -- there are times when it looks like it was set in a nudist camp. Even Jean-Hugues Anglade strolls around with it all on show -- thankfully he looks like he has kept up his gym membership.

The scene in which Betty throws the whole of the fixtures and fittings of the beach apartment out of the window was stolen by a famous car advert (in the UK) and it really is a stretch of the imagination in that Zorg doesn't respond to it. He just paints on and lets her get on with it -- like he doesn't care.

(I think we all know how we would react in a similar situation and it wouldn't be like Zorg!)

This has great cinematography with every scene framed to perfection. The dour insides of the French household and the generally dirty oven and sink (usually with two weeks worth of dishes in them.) Very true if you know that part of the world!

The repeating, irregular, piano theme tune is what cinema is about -- when in the hands of people that know how to marry both mediums. Images and music fitting together to form a perfect marriage. Fantastic and moving.

The famous Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gives this low marks -- citing too much flesh being on display (among other faults) -- and this is sad given that he gave Kill Bill Part One top marks. A woman making love to a man she is in passionately in love with is tasteless -- a homicidal woman slicing the arms of a whole room of gangsters is OK?

Roger -- I respect you a great deal, but you are as wrong as Leslie Halliwell (author of the world's most famous film guide book) when he gave Close Encounters no stars at all.

You should come over here (Europe) a bit more. Walk about the beaches of France and Spain and look at the amount of flesh on display and the way people show affection for one another without glancing 'round to see who is looking. True it has one or two sex scenes too many -- as I hinted before -- but it is sex that means something and is about something.

Betty Blue is one of my top 200 films of all time and while it has its limits and its faults (it does sag a little in middle) it remains a powerful piece of work about living with crazy people and how easily good times can slip in to bad. I think if the sex was toned down and there was a bit more of the comedy/romance in the centre than this could easily be part of the IMDb top 200. Not that this really matters all that much.

A product that only the French could make and one gets under your skin and stays there.

This review is a reference to the original cinema cut.

Sometimes a film makes a long, long journey.

For me this happened in several ways. The first is in real time. I saw this a couple decades ago in the short version. I was unimpressed. The word on it then was all about the first scene, how it was supposed to be "real" sex, as if that were important. I remember the film as a tepid failure.

I recently saw "H Story" and was blown away by Beatrice Dalle. So I sought this out, having forgotten seeing it. I was lucky enough to see the director's cut at over three hours.

Its an engaging thing, a rather delicate and rich journey within the thing, a well crafted love story. There are a hundred intimacies here, and most of them not directly involving the two romantically.

The main spine is musical. The couple end up owning a piano store and a piano melody is introduced which is so, so very effective it recalls how music was woven into the space between the two lovers in "Elvira Madigan." After we relate the pianos to their future, there's a terrific sequence — a meditation. Everything in the center of the film is meditative — a sequence where a piano is delivered on a huge truck, and certain dear things happen.

It still has a severely flawed ending, but the trip is wonderful. Cinematic love, a relationship born right. Two actors and a director who understand.

One thing I particularly liked was what I call the folding.The movie is based on an incompetent book and the story features an incompetent writer who turns that book into the lovely thing we see. And he does so in the fashion of "Moulin Rouge" and "Lolita" by largely making it up, or effectively so. He is an untrustable narrator. Betty may never have existed, or only existed partly. Or she may have existed and with her lover/writer created a new story. (I said it was intimate.)

We even see her typing the manuscript, transmuting it then and later in her actions so as to make it sweet.

This is love, when the story flows from two hearts.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.