Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001) - film review

Having established herself as a successful writer in the United States, Betty Fisher returns to her native France with her four-year old son Joseph.  She buys a house in a suburb of Paris and invites her mother, Margot, to stay with her, in an attempt to heal the scars of the past.  Margot suffers from the medical condition porphyria which makes her prone to acts of violence and impairs her judgement.  When Joseph dies tragically in an accident, Margot immediately goes out and finds another young boy to replace him.  Initially shocked by her mother’s act, Betty soon becomes attached to the young boy and starts to think of him as her own son.  Meanwhile, the police have started to investigate the disappearance of the missing boy, and suspect he has been murdered by the black lover of his real mother...

Whilst not as striking or as satisfying as many of Claude Miller’s previous films, Betty Fisher et autres histoires is a strangely compelling work which offers a credible portrayal of a fragile mother-daughter relationship.  This part of the film is by far the most interesting and believable, thanks largely to first-rate acting performances from Sandrine Kiberlain and Nicole Garcia who respectively play the love-starved daughter Betty and the guilt-stricken by mentally unbalanced mother Margot.

What mars the film is the way in which the narrative is fragmented into a number of weakly coupled story strands which ultimately come together in a somewhat unconvincing pulp-fiction style ending.   The film is heavily unbalanced, with just too many secondary characters vying for our attention, with not one of them being as remotely interesting as Betty or her mother.  In a more conventional thriller, this would not have been a problem.  The fault is that, with the film’s shockingly effective beginning, Miller deliberately set out to make Betty and her mother the central focus of the film – to the extent that all other subplots are almost entirely superfluous.

Another problem with the film, which probably stems from its unsatisfying narrative structure, is that it unsure whether it is a thriller or a drama.  Towards the end, the plot relies so heavily on coincidence that it comes dangerously close to farce (particularly the sub-plot with the hopeless crook Alex, which is presumably intended purely for comic relief).

Despite its obvious narrative weaknesses, Betty Fisher et autres histoires is an entertaining and generally likeable film.   Miller’s cinematic approach has certainly changed in recent years, and his mastery of the digital hand-held camera is partly responsible for the film’s unusual visual feel.  The slightly shaky camerawork serves to emphasise the emotional turbulence between Betty and her mother, although even this is perhaps taken too far in some places.

© James Travers 2002

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