Kind of `Blue': Looking back with new eyes at an old flame
Love can be an intoxicating, mutable, shimmering thing -- and that's just the person sitting next to you at dinner, to say nothing of a movie you last saw a good decade ago. You loved it, but how much was really there in the first place? In 1986 French director Jean-Jacques Beineix found a star in Beatrice Dalle, the volatile center of "Betty Blue," which has finally been released in its full-length version here. Dalle fully incarnated the title character, who appears out of nowhere to shatter the world of Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a one-time would-be writer now contentedly wasting his life as a handyman in a dumpy seaside resort.
The film's charm is its atmosphere, that most ephemeral of things, fired by the viewers' fascination with Betty. Dalle's rough features suit her character's emotional extremes; by comparison, Anglade comes off as pretty and passive. Cooler eyes watch the film now, and when an acquaintance of Zorg's, leering wolfishly, describes her as "a bit common," one has to ruefully admit that he's right.
No one walked away from "Betty Blue" unscarred. Beineix is long past even trying to reach the same heights, and Anglade has been reduced to the occasional haunted-detective part. As for Dalle, she's been followed step-for-step by her breakout role, be it in Claire Denis's "Trouble Every Day" or Michael Haneke's "Time of the Wolf."
When one talks of DVD extras, "minimal" is the code word for "not much." Alas, on this score, the "Betty Blue" DVD sets a new record. No interviews, no alternate takes, no commentary. All you've got to go on is what remains of your affection for Betty herself. (
