Film: Betty Blue – Director’s Cut
Release date: 13th March 2006
Certificate: 18
Running time: 185 mins
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Starring: Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Gerard Darmon, Consuelo De Havilland, Clementine Celarie
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Sony
Format: DVD
Country: France
Jean-Jacques Beineix’s third effort after the striking Diva (1981) and the disappointing La lune dans le caniveau (1983). The accusation of style over substance has always been thrown at Beineix, never more so than in his sophomore effort; many critics continued the tradition with Betty Blue. Nevertheless, it’s proved to be the most popular and resilient of his films and garnered multiple nominations and awards both at home and abroad. It’s telling that, out of nine César nominations including best film and best director, it won only the one – for best poster.
Zorg is living an uncomplicated life, painting the beachfront bungalows where he also lives. He meets Betty, a girl who’s as beautiful as she is volatile.
After finding Zorg’s unpublished handwritten novel and tiring of his repulsive boss, she trashes his car and burns down the bungalow. They embark on a road trip to her best friend Lisa’s empty hotel, where Betty proceeds to type up Zorg’s novel - one finger at a time.
Working at the pizza restaurant owned by Lisa’s boyfriend to make ends meet, Betty grows angrier at the rejections Zorg’s novel receives. Packed off with Zorg to the countryside after attacking one of the publishers who’s rejected Zorg with a knife, Betty finds little solace in the peaceful surroundings.
Short of cash, Zorg finds ever more inventive ways of acquiring money. Meanwhile, Betty’s mental decline continues…
Oh, that poster. If you were anywhere between puberty and middle age in the mid-80s, you’ll know the poster; it adorned the wall of any student who wanted to be seen as even remotely intellectual, and was a visual byword for French cool. “We screwed every night. The forecast was for storms.” That prediction, given by our narrator Zorg at the very beginning of the film, neatly sums up the movie entire. It was fêted on its release in 1986 and quite rightly lauded again when the Director’s Cut, or Version Intégrale, came out in 2006. Usually marketed on its erotic content due to the preponderance of extremely graphic sex and frequent nudity, this completely misses the point. The nudity and sex is relaxed, casual and fun. Betty and Zorg are completely at ease with it, as are we. Seen by many as an essay of a doomed love affair, and a misogynist one at that due to the way in which Betty and her mental state are portrayed, this isn’t seeing the film as a whole. Betty Blue is, at heart, a farce - a very Gallic view of a woman having a prolonged and somewhat violent mental breakdown.
At first, Betty’s outbursts could be taken as cute, almost justified. Who wouldn’t want to throw paint all over the prized car of an obese, lecherous bully? Or set fire to one of his properties and then run away? We’re rooting for Betty in the first act as she does the things we often daydream about yet dare not. She’s fun, vivacious and unpredictable, and we’re as taken with her as Zorg is. Sure, she’s lost him his job and home, but it wasn’t a very good job or a particularly nice home, and he’s going to be a famous author once she gets his book published anyway. The palette in these early scenes reflects this, all bright sunshine and primary colours. Once this breezy first act is played out, we then embark on what is essentially a road movie.
The absurdity and farce that peppers Betty Blue throughout can be found mainly in the myriad of supporting characters. The most memorable of these is a refuse collector, who sports a hook in place of the hand he lost in a mattress accident, and has a pathological hatred of mattresses as a result. Sure, Betty is clearly mad it seems to be saying, but isn’t everyone?
At almost three hours, Betty Blue is too long. Beineix tries to cram in too many scenes of increasing quirkiness. Some, such as a series of cross-dressing stick-up jobs, could easily have been excised without any loss. They stilt the narrative flow and seem shoehorned in. There is also no attempt to explain or investigate Betty’s mental state. Indeed, it’s clearly obvious from the very beginning that her behaviour will lead down one path and one path only. She’s clearly a very disturbed young lady, quite possibly from an event or events in her childhood, but this is never explored, discussed or remarked upon by anyone, and none of the characters, save for Zorg, want much to do with her when she kicks off. Under her spell, Zorg displays all the strength of a lovesick puppy, only occasionally confronting her. And yet it can be argued that it’s really his film, despite the title. It’s Zorg’s story we’re following, not Betty’s, and its Zorg we’re rooting for, having consigned Betty to her fate at an early stage. But then a film called ‘Zorg’ with a picture of a pouting Jean-Hughes Anglade as the poster just wouldn’t have done.
But these are mere quibbles. Betty Blue is a rich, luscious, luxurious experience and a joyous blast of realistic fresh air - a veritable smorgasbord of characters and situations. And the poster still looks damn good after twenty-five years.
Quintessentially French, Betty burst forth an icon of cinema and remains so twenty five-years after its initial release. It’s a real shame Béatrice Dalle never made anything remotely as good ever again. JMB
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