Betty Blue (1986)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix
A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.
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What critics compared Betty Blue to
In a kind of devilish performance duet, she’s ably matched by a punky live-wire turn from Rumpf, who channels an unholy blend of Béatrice Dalle in “Betty Blue” and Fairuza Balk’s signature 1990s role in “The Craft.”
The script by Roth and Guillermo Amoedo plants a lot of Chekhov’s guns early on, all surrounding the innocent-faced main character Justine (Lorenza Izzo): a flute necklace, a lecture on female genital mutilation, and, perhaps most obscurely, a poster for Jean-Jacques Beineix’s anguished epic Betty Blue tacked above her bed back home.
It is that well told and acted, screenplay by David Birke based on Philippe Djian's ("Betty Blue") novel "Oh...".
Adapted from “Oh...”, a recent novel by Philippe Djian (author of the source novel for the semi-notorious Betty Blue ), it adopts a decorous coolness reminiscent of the bourgeois suspense films of Claude Chabrol and, at times, the surreal subversions of upper-class mores and relationships of Luis Buñuel.
(“Elle” is based on the novel “Oh …,” by Philippe Djian, the author of “Betty Blue.”)
Ultimately, Electra is little more than another example of one of French cinema's favorite tropes, the Crazy Beautiful Sex Bomb Who Can't Be Tamed (see also: Beatrice Dalle's character in Betty Blue, for the most iconic deployment of this archetype).
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Beineix made his directing debut with Diva, and went on to make the revered eroto-classic Betty Blue (and also, it turns out, a 1997 version of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for French television).
Jean-Jacques Beineix ("The Moon in the Gutter"/"Betty Blue"), in his debut as a director, earns a place on the international scene with this intelligent, gripping and slick French thriller.
Beineix, whose slickly designed "Diva" launched the film movement known as the "cinema du look," contrasts tranquil landscapes against busy, hothouse interiors where the lovers' psychodrama plays out.
Though he hasn't made a film since 2001, New York art houses are ensuring we don't forget "cinéma du look" architect Jean-Jacques Beineix: Film Forum revived his 1981 debut, Diva, in 2007, and now Cinema Village presents the 185-minute version of Beineix's third film, 1986's Betty Blue.
Jean-Jacques Beineix rocketed to cinematic stardom with the colorful, swirling 1981 film Diva, then fell to Earth with the oppressive The Moon in the Gutter.
The name of the movie is "Betty Blue," and it is the third work by the Frenchman whose first film was the electrifying " Diva " and whose second was the baffling " The Moon in the Gutter ."
The emaciated storyline fixates relentlessly on an intensifying partnership between the eponymous Betty (Béatrice Dalle) and her blithely deadbeat lover Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade, who would later riff on his obliquely emasculated persona in La Femme Nikita).
That's when I realized: what I know about the work of Jean-Hugues Anglade you could fit on the head of a pin; I've only seen him in one other performance, as Zorg in Betty Blue (a.k.a.
Chastain is an admirably prickly leading lady here – she’s basically her character from Zero Dark Thirty in a Betty Blue wig and sweatpants.
The inexplicable character motivations that were so frustrating in Beineix’s earlier film The Moon in the Gutter are here isolated to a single character.
Jean-Jacques Beineix rocketed to cinematic stardom with the colorful, swirling 1981 film Diva, then fell to Earth with the oppressive The Moon in the Gutter.
The name of the movie is "Betty Blue," and it is the third work by the Frenchman whose first film was the electrifying " Diva " and whose second was the baffling " The Moon in the Gutter ."