Betty (1992)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

Betty is one of writer-director Claude Chabrol's darker and more contemplative films, a fascinating portrait of a woman - in fact, two women - who cannot live without love.  Chabrol was clearly as much inspired by Gustave Flaubert's classic tome Madame Bovary (which he adapted as a film with Isabelle Huppert immediately before this one) as by Georges Simenon's 1960 novel Betty.  Whilst it hardly rates as one of the director's more distinguished films, it does have an astonishing performance from Marie Trintignant, an actress who was particularly adept at playing complex, often unfathomable characters - as she amply demonstrated in Alain Corneau's Série noire (1979) and Jean-Jacques Beineix's 37°2 le matin (1986). Here, Trintignant manages to get completely under the skin of another hard-to-pin-down character, portraying the love-torn alcoholic with harrowing 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 his principal actress, capably supported by her co-star Stéphane Audran, the director's former wife and frequent collaborator. Audran had previously starred in some of the director's most highly regarded films - Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969), Le Boucher (1970) - and is just as superb here in a substantial, made-to-measure supporting role.

The main interest of the film lies in the fact that Chabrol seems to regard its heroine as a puzzle. Betty's past is revealed to us through a series of flashbacks, going progressively back in time as the character manages to recover from her alcoholic binges.  It is an approach that adds a touch of Hitchcockian suspense to the narrative and heightens the poignancy of Betty's predicament, making her resemble more a martyr of fate than a self-pitying wretch. The film ends in a low-key manner but is all the more moving for that.

Film Synopsis

Rejected by her family in Lyon, Betty ends up alone and drunk in a Parisian bar.  She meets a man who takes her to a nearby restaurant.  Here she strikes up a friendly rapport with an older woman, Laure, with whom she feels she has something in common.  Like Betty, Laure has been cut adrift by her bourgeois family and has since turned to drink for solace.  Seeing she has a friend as well as a sympathetic ear, Betty allows Laure to take her back to her home where she recounts her tale of woe.  It was after she was caught cheating on her husband that Betty was forced into a quick divorce by her unforgiving in-laws.  She lost not only her home and her husband, but also all contact with her children.  Despite the kindness that Laure shows her, Betty finds herself strongly drawn to her partner, Mario, the owner of the restaurant where they met.  Betty's only interest now is in seducing Mario..