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.
© James Travers 2000
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Claude Chabrol film:
L'Oeil de Vichy (1993)
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..
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.