BETTY BLUE Movie Review

37.2 le Matin
37.2 Degrees in the Morning

There's a lot to hoot at in the third feature film by Diva creator Jean-Jacques Beineix, but watching an obviously gifted director's talent dribble away bit by bit is hardly a pleasurable experience. The expectations raised by Diva, Beineix's surprise 1982 hit (which took off in France only after American critics and audiences championed it), were unceremoniously dashed by his second picture, the ill-conceived style-über-alles marathon of would-be visual poetry, Moon in the Gutter. One can only assume that his third film, the sexually explicit Betty Blue, was conceived as a fallback, sure-fire career resuscitator that would at least demonstrate Beineix's ability to make both news and noise at the worldwide boxoffice. But what Beineix may have overlooked was the fact that movie sex was not exactly impossible to come by in the U.S. in 1986,and Americans no longer had to look overseas to see previously forbidden nudity or simulated orgasm. You get them both in Betty Blue, and as these things go, you get your money's worth. (Ironically, it was the French who packed theatres for this picture; it barely made a ripple over here.) Beatrice Dalle is Betty, the apparently unstable but remarkably energetic lover of Zorg (not an alien), played by Jean-Hughes Anglade. Zorg, who has found time somehow to write a manuscript that impresses Betty, agrees to go to Paris with her and ultimately to the south of France, where things take an ugly but not entirely unexpected turn. For a movie that makes very little sense, Betty Blue goes down pretty easily and you can have a good time with it. Mistaking Beineix for a great, unappreciated talent, however, would be less than wise. (If two hours of Betty Blue aren't satisfying, the inevitable three-hour “director's cut” has been recently made available. I haven't seen it, so I can't report if it contains any more “good parts.”)

NEXT STOP … I Am Curious (Yellow), Birds in Peru, Moon in the Gutter

1986 (R) 121m/C FR Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Gerard Darmon, Consuelo de Haviland, Clementine Celarie, Jacques Mathou, Vincent Lindon; D: Jean-Jacques Beineix; W: Jean-Jacques Beineix; C: Jean-Francois Robin; M: Gabriel Yared. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘86: Best Foreign-Language Film; Cesar Awards ‘86: Best Actor (Anglade). VHS, LV, Closed Caption FOX