Betty (1992) - film review

Alone and drunk, Betty, is led to a Paris restaurant by a stranger.  Here, she meets an older woman, Laure, with whom she strikes up an instant rapport.  The two women seem to have suffered the same lot in their lives.  Laure takes Betty back to her hotel and helps to cure the young woman of her depression and alcoholism.  Little by little, Betty pieces together her recent history and realises that perhaps her life is not worth living.  The she meets Mario, Laure’s lover...

This is a fascinating portrait of a woman – in fact, two women – who cannot live without love.  Director Claude Chabrol was clearly as much motivated by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (which he adapted for the silver screen immediately before this film) as by Georges Simenon’s 1960 novel Betty.  What Chabrol’s film Madame Bovary lacked in emotional depth and conviction, his subsequent film Betty has in abundance.

There are two very remarkable things about this film.  The first is unmistakably Marie Trintignant’s performance as the central character, Betty.   She manages to get completely under the skin of a very complex character, portraying the love-torn alcoholic with considerable conviction.  Betty is an enigma, a tragic victim of circumstances - and the power with which Chabrol is able to tell her story is due largely to Marie Trintignant - very capably supported by her co-star Stéphane Audran.

The second remarkable thing is the way in which the film is constructed.  Chabrol treats the subject of Betty rather like a puzzle, using all the devices and skill he has perfected over two decades of making thrillers.  Betty’s past is unveiled through a series of flashbacks, going progressively back in time as the character Betty manages to recover from her alcoholic binges.  It as an approach which creates suspense and adds poignancy to a sad story with great effect.  As a result, Chabrol manages to get away with an understated, yet rather moving ending to his film.

This is another in a long series of films which shows Chabrol’s mastery of cinematographic suspense and a surprising depth of understanding of female psychology, whilst taking yet another swipe at the hypocritical brutality of French bourgeois society.

© James Travers 2000

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