It's a passionate love story executed in a dull fashion.
Betty Blue (1986)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 23
Fresh: 17
Rotten:6
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Runtime: 3 hrs 5 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: A shocking and offbeat story of two French lovers, Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Beatrice Dalle), who fall into a deeply erotic and all-encompassing relationship. Zorg is a simple repairman... A shocking and offbeat story of two French lovers, Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Beatrice Dalle), who fall into a deeply erotic and all-encompassing relationship. Zorg is a simple repairman in his mid-thirties who lives a relatively dull life in a remote, weathered shack until he meets Betty, a sexy, mercurial younger woman who challenges his way of thinking and forces him to change his life. When Betty and Zorg are not having wild and uninhibited sex (and joyously traipsing around naked), Zorg is writing his novel, an unpublished masterwork that Betty discovers and vehemently champions. Betty, prone to violent fits of passionate rage, attacks Zorg's boss and burns their shack down, leaving Zorg no choice but to join her on a series of spirited adventures. They move in with Betty's best friend and her boyfriend and for a brief time live a happy bohemian lifestyle, wild and crazy in love. But as the film progresses, Betty's mental illness becomes more apparent, she lives in a fitful manic world of passionate highs and lows while Zorg desperately attempts to coddle and comfort her. Finally, the lovers start over in a dreamy rural town, hoping to live a normal life, but Betty's fantasy world encroaches on her reality as she slowly spirals out of control in this intense story of love and lust, based on the novel by Philippe Djian. [More]
Starring: Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Gerard Darmon, Clementine Celarie
Starring: Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Gerard Darmon, Clementine Celarie, Jacques Mathou
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Screenwriter: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Producer: Claudie Ossard
Composer: Gabriel Yared
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Reviews for Betty Blue
Beinex's Oscar-nominated, quintessentially French amour fou tells of a love relationship that descends into madness, splendidly played by Dalle as the free-spirited troubled femme; one scene of self-inflicted violence is truly tough to watch.
Occasionally drags and meanders, but it boasts an impressive visual style and a radiant, charismatic performance by the ultra-sexy Béatrice Dalle.
If Betty Blue feasts on the bodies of its leads, it’s this director’s cut that fully establishes the movie’s artistic bona fides.
Curvy, ripe Dalle, only 21 at the time and in her first screen role, completely commits to the part.
If Dalle never made anything of note again -- and she didn't -- then this alone would be enough to stake her claim as an icon of late 20th century cinema.
Beineix's film is awash with the humour and cool of his debut, Diva, but lacks the cohesion to sustain its weighty ambition.
The movie was colorful and swirling and oppressive all at once, and in 1991, Beineix recut it not to slim it down but to add a florid third hour.
Dalle, a model, makes a moving debut as the desperate baby-doll who fails to mold reality to her own conceptions of happiness. Anglade is more introvertedly affecting as the lucidly casual, but devoted Zorg.
Beineix's villagescapes and countryside vistas are hard to resist, and the dichotomy of a stone cold looney prancing around them only makes the tableau more curiously complete
If Betty Blue teaches us anything -- and there's a good chance it doesn't -- it's that life is full of little mysteries.
If Dalle finds with remarkable clarity the one note that her role calls for -- the petulant volcano -- she can't support the existential weight Beineix wants to drop on her.
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