Betty Blue

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They have been having a passionate affair already for some time, when one day she quits her job as a waitress because her (married) boss made unmistakably sexual advances.

Most readers should have no problem accepting the implausible premise of this wonderfully trashy stand-alone from Djian (Unforgivable). Beautifully shot with amazing colours, quirky characterization, excellent acting and imaginative direction this movie is a delight for all of its 185 minutes (the director's cut is the one to go for). 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. Almost like a weird Alice in Wonderland fantasy, you have the main character(s) and everyone else is peripheral, everything surrounding them is surreal and inexplicable. My friend says he thinks the whole movie is in Zorg's mind, and the boiling pot at the beginning and the end brings the story together for this point.The author also succeeds in conveying the narrator’s helplessness in view of Betty’s problems and his inner development from someone who just lets himself drift through life without direction to a man who takes life into his own hands. At the same time, I must say that I can’t help feeling confused (even annoyed) by the fact that none of Betty’s and the narrator’s usually violent acts, not to say crimes, has legal aftermaths of any kind for them. Everything in the center of the film is meditative — a sequence where a piano is delivered on a huge truck, and certain dear things happen. It’s such a personal experience and taste’s differ so widely that it feels absurd to put your opinion out there sometimes. The 1080p/24hz high-definition encode is sourced from a high-def digital restoration performed by SND Groupe M6, scanned from the 35mm original camera negative.

Most of the novel is taken up with their life together – Betty’s outbursts when a publisher rejects Zorg’s novel, her joy at being pregnant and her gloom when she finds she is not, while Zorg tries to keep things calm, knowing that Betty has made his life worth living but that, eventually, she is going to do something which is going to give him a lot of problems. Betty is both passionate and unstable, almost childlike, and initially it is outsiders who bear the brunt of her anger - the piggish owner of the seaside bungalows, for example, or the playboy publisher who rejects Zorg's novel. There's some nudity but due to the pacing of the film, it just didn't bother me as nudity for nudity's sake, but just a part of the life these two lovers led.A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.