Betty (Sandrine Kiberlain) is a young mother who has just published her first novel to great success. She is now back in the suburbs of France after leaving Édouard (Stéphane Freiss) the New York poet and father of Joseph (an adorable Arthur Setbon) back in the states.

Still scarred by the madness of her mother, Margot (Nicole Garcia), Betty nonetheless welcomes mommy dearest to her new home. Shortly after Margot’s arrival, Joseph suffers a fatal accident that neither mother nor grandmother can manage. In mourning, Betty falls once again under her mother’s care that, for once, culminates into an, albeit highly questionable, virtuous act.

Believing everyone will be happier Margo kidnaps José (Alex Chatrian), the abused son of Carole (Mathilde Seigner), a promiscuous bar maid who works for Milo (Michaël Abiteboul), lives with François (Luck Mervil) and sleeps with dozens of men including René l’Arménien (Yves Jacques) and Alex (Édouard Baer) the whoring forger.

As the kidnapping grabs the media’s attention, Betty faces the dilemma of whether to return Jose to his family and get the police--lead by the Harry Shearer look-alike Yves Verhoeven (Martinaud)--off the back of the François and his seemingly indifferent mother or keep the “ugly” boy living with her.

For his part, Jose once cried at mommy’s image on the television, but the love of Betty and Margot and the presents he receives under his new class status changes his mind—although he refers to his illegal guardian as Betty.

Meanwhile Beth enters in and out of different worlds, Alex is pulling scams and screwing some wives, Mathilde is screwing around and scamming, too, François is harassed by the cops and Milo sulks about everyone’s lack of action.

Interspersed with unnecessary black cards telling us whose story it is, none of the characters are sympathetic, and although that is hardly necessary (despite the inane clamoring of petit-bourgeois film buffs posing as film critics who repeatedly preach differently), it is clear which of these ethically challenged characters director and writer Claude Miller disdains and it is no soften blow.

Ignorant about the circle being dead, Miller ends the film where it begins, at an airport. Through a series of coincidences leading to the film’s penultimate panoramic scenes, not only is each character punished for their ethical transgressions according to, presumably, Miller’s standards even if the book is based on “Tree of Hands” by Ruth Rendell, they are over punished to such a degree in a twist of narrative discombobulating, the results are draconian and puritanical.

Sure it would be nice to see the bad mother punished, but murdered? Yes the father who embarks on the sale of a child while showing no grief about his own son’s death is an indecent human being, but murdered? Okay, so the grifter stole from the Russian mob boss, must he be mocked by absurd circumstances so cruelly? And are we too assume that Betty will give up the love of a Doctor Castang (Roschdy Zem) and her writing career to live in a foreign land where she does not speak the language?

Despite this deficient conclusion the film does have its strong points that manage to carry the film for quite awhile.

Maybe Miller thinks he is the late Krystof Kieslowki with this arrangement of coincidences but the only thing he shares with Kieslowski is his conservative morality not his rigorous, often pretentious, camera movement, or superior writing.

The primary value of “Alias Betty” is some strong performances by the cast with notable accomplishments from the three primary female actors, Kiberlain, Garcia and Seigner.

Perhaps if the film was smaller with more focus on these three and eschewed Alex’s story and Édouard’s presence altogether and was not so morally fanatical, classist, and racially suspicious, “Alias Betty” could have been something else.

For all the ill-fated parents out there with a missing child, losing nights of sleep, their health, and their happiness, while simultaneously living under the scrutiny of law enforcement and the mass media, the new French film “Alias Betty” will be a mixed blessing of hope, despair and indignation. Hope because Jose is alive. Despair because the family will never be the same. Indignation because the film seems to suggest some children should be kidnapped for their own good.