BETTY BLUE A-
aka: 37°2 Le Matin
France (120 mi) 1986
d: Jean-Jacques Beineix Director’s Cut: (185 mi)
I had known Betty for
a week ... The forecast was for storms
—Zorg (Jean-Hughes Anglade)
Roger Ebert and his ilk dismiss this as nothing more than
soft-core porn disguised as an art film, listed at one time as one of his most
hated films, but viewers should look further. First and foremost, this is
Béatrice Dalle’s first film, an incendiary French actress who always pushes her
characters to the edge and sometimes beyond, and this is no exception. She rivals Isabelle Huppert not in the
quality of films she’s made, but in finding roles that are unusually “out
there” and in her devastatingly unique performances of damaged souls. Her relationship with Jean-Hughes Anglade, as
Betty and Zorg, is idealistically intense.
And as they both prance around the set naked for a good portion of the
film, drinking, having sex, eating, laughing, arguing, or just enjoying one
another’s company, they certainly come across as a free-spirited couple, which
is telegraphed right from the outset.
Some may remember the graphic eye-opening sex scene, but what I remember
is the gorgeous setting on a beach in a run down, yet idyllic beach house
perfectly captured in sumptuous photography by Jean-Francois Robin. It is a perfect sunny day where the colors
couldn’t be more captivating, the tone is utterly clear and bright, and this is
the setting where the audience is drawn into the lives of Betty and Zorg, a
young couple that believe they were made for each other. Also of unusual interest is the hauntingly
beautiful musical theme that Zorg introduces on the piano, a simple melody that
feels like it’s floating on air and recurs throughout the rest of the film,
utterly gorgeous, a lilting melody we can’t seem to get out of our heads. As it turns out, it bears a striking
similarity to a similar theme used in Abderrahmane Sissako’s WAITING FOR
HAPPINESS (2002), which is among the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, “Djôrôlen”
by Oumou Sangare oumou sangare djorolen (worry
anxiety) YouTube (6:43) from Mali on her 1996 album “Worotan” which was
released ten years after this film. On
the film soundtrack, written by Gabriel Yared, the song is listed twice in
different versions under the song names “C’est le vent, Betty” and “Bungalow
Zen.” But the simple piano melody
without any elaborate orchestration expresses it best, Betty Blue (37°2 Le Matin) YouTube
(2:36).
The film is based on the Philippe Djian novel 37 Degrees 2 Le Matin, a writer whose every
novel according to Amazon sells a million copies in France alone, also popular
in both Germany and Great Britain, but is utterly overlooked in the United
States. This is essentially a love story
told in two film versions, where the shorter version accentuates Betty while
the longer Director’s Cut more prominently features Zorg, a strategy also
utilized in Fassbinder’s BOLWEISER (The
Stationmaster’s Wife) in 1977, which similarly features a longer three hour
film version of a dissolution of a marriage in two parts that accentuates the
cuckolded husband (Kurt Raab in his final Fassbinder performance), eventually
revised to a shorter two hour TV version that accentuates the cheating wife
(Elisabeth Trissenaar). In each case I
prefer the longer versions, as the style of filmmaking is exceptionally high
quality and the devastation at the end of each is ultimately more powerful with
the longer, slower build up which accentuates character and mood. The two hour version of BETTY BLUE feels like
it’s rushing to its ominous conclusion, feeling somehow overwhelmed, while the
director’s cut emphasizes the slowness of the recurring musical refrain
alongside unbearably long silences. No
explanation is given for Betty’s sudden retreat from reality, but the audience
is able to share in Zorg’s own equally bizarre mood swings which border on the
surreal.
Beineix has a painterly eye for composition, freely moving
his camera around to match the mood and energy of this breezy young couple
barely in their twenties, intermixing solitary houses and landscapes with
populated urban street scenes along with the more intimate intermingling of
faces and bodies. Dalle and Anglade are
both terrific at making their relationship feel effortless and natural with
simple gestures like eye contact, embraces, body language, their shared
appreciation for food and incessant humor with one another, where they are
clearly inordinately close and genuinely captivated by being in love, even as
Betty exhibits a volatile temper prone to acts of violence. From the outset on the beach, remembering how
Betty sauntered into that door with breathtaking sexuality and allure, one
would think this had the makings of an idyllic relationship, but far from it,
the film turns the tables and really features in intimate detail one of the
more dysfunctional couples ever captured onscreen, as Betty’s happiness turned
tortuous behavior defies comprehension, especially for the man who loves her,
who’s twisted all out of sorts himself trying to cope with her outrageously
difficult demands, confounded by her irrepressible beauty and childlike
vulnerability. Dalle’s Betty is the kind
of woman who completely embraces life to the fullest, whose effervescent spirit
and boundless energy make her the object of every man’s desire, the center of
attention, a woman impossible to resist, and
God created woman, leaving Zorg no choice in the matter except to love her
whole-heartedly every second of every day.
It’s a mad world where nothing makes sense except being in the throes of
love. Very few films capture that “need
to love” quite like this one, especially that soaring elevation where we’re
suddenly left flying without a net wondering how in the world we ever got up
there, completely clueless how to get back down.
