1002 Betty Blue

[Boosmahn]

Betty Blue



When the easygoing would-be novelist Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) meets the tempestuous Betty (Béatrice Dalle in a magnetic breakout performance) in a sunbaked French beach town, it's the beginning of a whirlwind love affair that sees the pair turn their backs on conventional society in favor of the hedonistic pursuit of freedom, adventure, and carnal pleasure. But as the increasingly erratic Betty's grip on reality begins to falter, Zorg finds himself willing to do things he never expected to protect both her fragile sanity and their tenuous existence. Adapted from the hit novel 37°2 le matin by Philippe Djian, Jean-Jacques Beineix's art-house smash—presented here in its extended director's cut—is a sexy, crazy, careening joyride of a romance that burns with the passion and beyond-all-reason fervor of all-consuming love.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• High-definition digital restoration, approved by director Jean-Jacques Beineix, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Blue Notes and Bungalows, a sixty-minute documentary from 2013 featuring Beineix, actors Jean-Hugues Anglade and Béatrice Dalle, associate producer Claudie Ossard, cinematographer Jean-François Robin, and composer Gabriel Yared
• Making of "Betty Blue," a short video featuring Beineix and author Philippe Djian
• Le chien de Monsieur Michel, a short film by Beineix from 1977
• French television interview from 1986 with Beineix and Dalle
• Dalle screen test
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Chelsea Phillips-Carr

[dda1996a]

Janus just posted an image from Betty Blue on their Twitter page

Ew I hope they don't. Ive only seen the 3 hour cut which is bad, and after seeing Diva which was just awful Im pretty done with Beineix.

[Werewolf by Night]

Many of us were pretty done with Beineix in the late 80s, but I guess everyone gets a re-evaluation given enough time. Why can’t we have nice things like 4K restos of Patrice Chéreau’s Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train and L’homme blessé?

Or if we must have Béatrice Dalle, give us Haneke’s Time of the Wolf or any of the 3 Claire Denis films she’s in.

[dda1996a]

I still can't believe that someone like Ebert (who I personally never cared for, but still) though Diva was such a great movie, as I found it ridiculously awful and full of plot holes. But please please some Claire Denis

[colinr0380]

The very definition of 'amour fou', this is a kind of amazing film to see in one's formative teenage years, as it is both incredibly naughty and a kind of cautionary tale about falling in love with a bi-polar self-destructive person. This is really the film I think of first when I think of both Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hughes Anglade, as the whole film is focused on them and would not work at all without their chemistry together.

I had not realised that the original story on which this was based was written by Philippe Djian, who also wrote Elle until I saw this Mark Kermode introduction! I'd also say that this definitely works better in its three hour director's cut version because its all about languorous couplings and slow mental deterioration (and also kind of about using your lover as a muse for your creative impulse, perhaps furthering their destruction in doing so). It also, like 3 Women, preferably needs to be watched on a swelteringly hot and sweaty Summer evening for a fully immersive experience!

(Its also probably the film that Abdellatif Kechiche has been trying to recapture some of the sense of in a couple of his films more recently)

[Roscoe]

Betty's really blue because a Criterion release of Max Fleischer films would be so much more interesting.

[DRW.mov]

Very excited for this. Hopefully Beineix’s Moon in the Gutter also gets saved from Cinema Libre. It really needs a new restoration and could certainly stand the critical reappraisal of a Criterion release. It’s his best imo and deserves a comeback.

[peerpee]

The late film critic Tom Milne told me he was a big fan of DIVA, and 14 years later I've still not seen it. Milne had wonderful taste though, so there must be something good about it.

[bottled spider]

Pauline Kael:

An up-to-the-minute glittering toy of a movie, a romantic thriller from France, made by a new director, Jean-Jacques Beineix, who has a fabulous camera technique and understands the pleasures to be had from a picture that doesn't take itself too seriously-the whole high-tech incandescence of the film is played for humor. The diva is an awesomely beautiful black American soprano (Wilhelmenia Fernandez) who refuses to make recordings. Frédéric Andrei is the wide-eyed 18-year-old postal messenger who adores her; he sneaks his Nagra tape machine into her concert in Paris so he'll be able to listen to her at home-and all hell breaks loose around him. He's pursued by two baroque thugs: one is tall and Latin and chews gum with the jaws of a hippopotamus; the other (Dominique Pinon) is small, with spiky blond hair and sunglasses, and an earplug so he can listen to a transistor radio while he's on his murderous errands-he's so dissociated he's practically a mutant. The unfazable heroine (the 14- year-old Thuy An Luu) is a post-Godardian tootsie-in her short-short skirts and transparent plastic coat, she's a lollipop wrapped in cellophane. A man named Gorodish (Richard Bohringer), a Mr. Cool in a white suit and a white Citroën, comes to the aid of the besieged messenger. The film may remind you of Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL; it's Welles romanticized, packaged. It's a mixture of style and chic hanky- panky, but it's genuinely sparkling. The screenplay by Beineix and Jean Van Hamme is based on a novel by Delacorta (a pseudonym for Daniel Odier, who also writes under his own name); the cinematography is by Philippe Rousselot; the art direction is by Hilton McConnico. In French.
see Taking It All In.

I saw this in the theatre when I was quite young. I remember being very taken with the piece of opera highlighted, and the diva who sings it, Wilhelmenia Fernandez.

[bottled spider]

[Whoops, never mind. Thought the thread was about Diva not Betty Blue]

[dda1996a]

I can see why these films (including Bresson and Carax) were liked at the time, coming after the 70s French harsh realism, and their over propensity for grandiose style. But I don't care for most of these films, and it is to Carax's skill that he manages to make something as narratively silly as Muvais Sang as visually brilliant as it is. But Beineix fails at that in my opinion.
I might check out the regular cut one day, but as I posted before, the 3 hour cut kills the film completely. I much rather we get a Dalle/Denis collaboration (what about I Can't Sleep? Trouble Every Day?) than this, but it's been a while since there was a month that Criterion didn't release a film I dislike so

[colinr0380]

Diva was the film that pretty much kicked off what came to be known as the "Cinéma du look" of the 1980s which comprises Benieix with Diva, Betty Blue and The Moon In The Gutter; Luc Besson with Subway (probably the closest companion to Diva), The Big Blue and Nikita; and Leos Carax with Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf.

Its sort of about a kind of extravangant twist on punkish societal rebellion, with a glossy, almost narratively overwhelming elements of style (the opera in Diva, the sex in Betty Blue, the car stunts in Subway, the diving in The Big Blue, the dancing and waterskiing in the Carax) as the provocative (yet simultaneously rather empty, though that's kind of the point) element rather than the calculated lack of such style in punk itself. Nikita is probably the ultimate example of that with our initially down and out criminal being groomed in both etiquette and contract killing as if both were pretty much of the same piece! I think they are all really interesting films, but they were ripe for parody!

(Anyway, I would like more people to see Betty Blue if only so I can debate with people again about whether Clint Eastwood paid homage to the film in the climax for Million Dollar Baby!)

[Godot]

I'm pleased to hear about Criterion releasing Betty Blue, but I understand the negative comments here. I've only watched it once since my kids were born, as it's quite emotionally unpleasant and Betty is a difficult character with which to empathize. And although Zorg is more sympathetic and attractive, his passivity is maddening (though I think that's the point). I found this short summation of my impressions from 15 years ago (wow, that seems ancient), and I still recommend the movie for its bold take on gender norms. As another example of that, I love the ending where

Spoiler

bathed in (masculine) blue light from outside the kitchen, Zorg (now energized to create by his mercy-killing of Betty) hears Betty, embodied by the feminine cat, ask if he is writing, and he denies even this with a "no, I was thinking" before returning to his writing ... and then the cat turns its head around to find who Zorg was addressing. I really like that little note; my cat does this sometimes as well when I address her, like, "who is this idiot talking to?"

But I wish they would instead release Diva, which is the better film, and has only middling DVD releases (and Anchor Bay is the best of those!).

The late film critic Tom Milne told me he was a big fan of DIVA, and 14 years later I've still not seen it. Milne had wonderful taste though, so there must be something good about it.

Nick, I recommend you watch it. You should trust Ebert and Milne in their opinions on this one. I think it's not just surface gloss, as some in this forum aver; the underlying theme of authenticity in an artificial world is what keeps me coming back to it. Diva Hawkins (played by real diva Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) won't allow herself to be recorded because it deters from the reality of a live performance; she shuns copies and fakes and arms-length remove. When Gorodish lectures Jules on the art of buttering bread, or Jules has his carefully-selected prostitute dress in Hawkins' gown, or we hear the waves and seagulls but see a painting of the ocean wave preparing to crash, the film is noting the gaps in our lives between experience and reality. Beineix even accentuates this distancing with multiple audio cues that we think are soundtrack but are revealed to be diegetic sound (as when Jules turns off his tape player and the music stops). And he reverses this diegetic-non-diegetic games-playing in the last scene, in which

Spoiler

the movie arcs back to the setting of the first scene, as Hawkins comes out to the stage in the empty theater, after vowing to quit public performance if she can't trust her audience, and she appears as though she will sing for herself when ... we hear the roar of the crowd - but this time the sound is not "real" to the scene, it's artificial, it's the applause Jules recorded in the first scene of the movie. And Hawkins, realizing now that it was Jules all along who betrayed her, his sorrow and pain at the damage he wrecked, says, "I've never heard myself sing", and Jules holds her as "La Wally" plays for just the two of them. The purity of that ending reinforces for me that Diva is not just surface gloss.

The killer thug who dresses like a punk and acts so tough is revealed to listen to quaint cafe accordion music. The atmospheric soundtrack by Vladimir Cosma is beautiful; I had the album in high school and aside from the awesome opening track rendition of "La Wally" by Fernandez (yes, the irony is not lost), Cosma's piece "Sentimental Walk" is hypnotic. Man, this is making me want to watch Diva again, this weekend; but I'll wait more patiently for the CC Betty Blue.

edit: added another example of the distancing, in the last scene. Also, fixed my link to the earlier post from 2006

[Gregory]

My main positive association with this film is the way it's referenced in this lovely song ("Au Cinéma" by Lianne La Havas).

[beamish14]

Happy to see this wonderful film get a fresh Blu-Ray release. The extended/director's cut version is the only way to experience it. Despite the
original theatrical version garnering an Oscar nomination, it feels incomplete and is akin to a very rough sketch. Regarding Beineix, I really think he's
an absolutely godlike visual stylist. Even seeing it in a poorly dubbed British release print, Roselynne and the Lions mesmerized me, and has some of the most incredible camerawork I've ever seen. It's ridiculous that excellent films like IP-5 and Mortal Transfer never received theatrical distribution in North America.

He's a very talented painter as well, and has had a number of successful solo shows. I hope Criterion commissions him to do the box cover.

[Zot!]

But I wish they would instead release Diva, which is the better film, and has only middling DVD releases

. YES! Diva is one of those things that I am shocked has not maintained its filmic provenance. It is like a hipster time machine. Cool lofts, analogue hifi equipment, mopeds, beautiful rollerskating asian girls, beautiful black opera singers, gorgeous soundtrack, guns, switchblades, 80s Paris, ironic humor and even some fairytale sequences (the lighthouse). I’m surprised this has not been coopted by Kanye West or some other dork. Beyond its surface appeal, I find it a superior neonoir, with just enough humor and romance as well. One of my very most favorite movies. I wish I had to argue about how I was hip to it before it was cool.

[MichaelB]

Diva is very good indeed, and I have particularly fond memories of it because throughout the 1990s, a terminally tough decade for rep cinemas, it was one of the only films that could be guaranteed to turn a profit. When I totted up a list of its most frequently screened films for the Everyman Cinema’s 60th birthday souvenir booklet, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find it topping the charts - and, if memory serves, by a fairly long way. But there were sound reasons for this: Diva must have effectively subsidised any number of riskier screenings.

(Betty Blue would have been pretty high up the list too.)

[zedz]

I saw Diva a lot as a teenager on original release. it was my best friend's favourite film, and going to see it yet again was the default option when we had no idea what else to do. (This was possible because it played for months and months at a local arthouse cinema, and was sporadically revived for years afterwards, probably for sound commercial reasons as Michael attests above). It had a pretty ropey cop-show plot at its core, but was elaborated with so many wacky stylistic and narrative tricks that it was always diverting.

About ten years later, there was a brief revival, and my then best friend, who'd never seen it but had heard about how great it was, dragged me along. It had not aged well. Much of the 80s style that had seemed fresh at the time had subsequently been done to death, and arguably improved on. It was already looking like a museum piece. But who knows how it would look now, after several more stylistic waves have crashed.

[knives]

I went through all of his features a year or two ago and my response was definitely in line with your later one. The films all have pretty dopey cores and while the style is sometimes engaging it just seems overlong in an annoying way most of the time. A lot of them feel like bad films encapsulations of New Wave rock while Mortal Transfer came across as a lazy Burton does noir thing and IP5 had me half expecting Vanilla Ice to pop out it seemed like such a lazy and vaguely racist early '90s film.

[swo17]

Nov 19, only the extended cut

[dda1996a]

Big shame, as I have yet to watch the original cut, but at 3 hours this is simply grating and unnecessary

[kekid]

We have now several versions of Betty Blue on English-friendly Blu Ray but none of Diva. (The latter is available in French only Blu Ray). Can someone explain why? (apart from some nudity in Batty Blue)?

[knives]

You have to be right to have rights.

[dwk]

We have now several versions of Betty Blue on English-friendly Blu Ray but none of Diva. (The latter is available in French only Blu Ray). Can someone explain why? (apart from some nudity in Batty Blue)?

Lionsgate (via StudioCanal) has been sitting on it for a decade

[DRW.mov]

I’m sure Kino will put Diva out in a year or so. The real question is if Criterion is going to resurrect Moon in the Gutter from obscurity as well? (Same rights holder as BB, and in desperate need of a new restoration/transfer/critical reappraisal)