6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A beautiful, drunken, and promiscuous girl (Marie Trintignant) ends a disastrous evening at The Hole, a bar catering to the twisted and outcast. There she meets the recently widowed Laure (Stéphane Audran), an elegant retiree who lives alone in a luxury hotel. Laure takes Betty under her wing. Gradually, details of Betty's sad, sordid and, at times, sinister story of betrayal and self-destruction unfold in flashbacks as the women's relationship evolves into a lethal game of cat-and-mouse. Adapted from the novel by Georges Simenon, Betty shares many of the themes that made Chabrol's superb Les Biches (1968, starring Audran and Jean-Lous Trintignant) so erotically suspenseful...and Hitchcockian: The exchange of identity and guilt between two women of different ages, both in love with the same man.
Starring: Marie Trintignant, Stéphane Audran, Jean-François Garreaud, Christiane Minazzoli, Yves LambrechtForeign | 100% |
Drama | 65% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.67:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
French: LPCM 2.0
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Note: This film is available as part of 3
Classic Films by Claude Chabrol.
That famously French laissez faire attitude toward interrelationships, often but not always with regard to marriage, gets a rather surprising
workout in the trio of offerings on tap in 3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol. As I’ve discussed in some previous reviews of Chabrol’s work,
Chabrol has often seemed a little like a square peg attempting to fit into round holes, at least as defined by others. He never totally conformed to at
least some of the nascent ideas of the
nouvelle vague despite often being branded as a fellow traveler with the likes of Godard and Truffaut. Similarly, while Chabrol has often
been
compared at least in passing to Alfred Hitchcock, and while many of Chabrol’s films at least skirt with thriller or mystery elements, and many of them
display the same kind of rationalist approach to often troubling psychological elements that Hitch’s films can, there are nonetheless very few set
pieces in
Chabrol
films that match the sheer technical audacity that is on display in some of Hitchcock’s best remembered work. Two of the three films in this set play
at
least tangentially off of various dysfunctions in married relationships, while the third, The Swindle (original French title Rien ne va
plus), rather cheekily refuses to overtly specify what kind of relationship its focal pair has with each other, at least in terms of personal intimacy.
All
three films have elements of suspense, but as with many of Chabrol’s films, the emphasis isn’t necessarily on a central mystery but rather how
characters respond to irrational elements, either in their own psyches or impinging on them from external sources.
Betty is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. While there's nothing drastically problematic here, and indeed much of the transfer looks very nice, this is overall the least pleasing looking of the three films in this set. Colors aren't especially vivid, and in some dark scenes tend to almost approach monochromatic status. As with the two other films in this set, grain is occasionally ungainly, clumping a bit, especially when there are dark elements in the frame, as in black suit jackets and the like. Detail levels are generally very good, especially in the close-ups that Chabrol repeatedly utilizes. There's a nice organic quality to the presentation despite these probably niggling qualms, and other than slight wobble during the credits there aren't any image instability issues.
Betty features an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 track in the original French, with nonremovable English subtitles. As with all of the films in this set, the track more than capably supports the long dialogue sequences, while also offering a problem free presentation of Matthieu Chabrol's typically anachronistic score. Occasional scenes in The Hole, as well as a flashback in another crowded restaurant, provide a bit of hustle and bustle, but this is generally a fairly reserved track that gets the job done without much "wow" factor.
If you're a Chabrol fan, there's a lot to unpack in Betty, despite a curiously calm surface demeanor. That said, this is an awfully talky film that traffics in psychological turmoil from a weird kind of distance, and those unaccustomed to Chabrol's sometimes languid pace may find the other two films in this set more immediately accessible. Performances are top notch in any case, and with generally fine technical merits, Betty comes Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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