Aug 20, 2024
Betty (1992)
"You know, I wanted to ask Thérèse when I saw her in the cellar. I wanted to say: 'Show me your wound.' I wanted to have a wound, too. I've always been chasing that wound. I must be looking for pity. I'm not a victim. I'm not to be pitied. No one ever hurt me. I'm the one who did the hurting. I'm a fool. Say it! I blew it all. I've soiled everything, myself included."
#betty#1992#french cinema#claude chabrol#georges simenon#marie trintignant#stéphane audran#jean françois garreaud#yves lambrecht#christiane minazzoli#pierre vernier#nathalie kousnetzoff#pierre martot#thomas chabrol#yves verhoeven#henri attal#coco bakonyi#emmanuelle bataille#mélanie blatt#powerful and devastating in equal measures. a tightly focused study of one vulnerable soul in freefall. as the titular Betty#Trintignant gives a truly phenomenal performance; her character is a self destructive alcoholic who has just broken up her marriage to the#high society son of a general and signed a document promising not to contact their young children. in a drunken reverie she stumbles into#the reassuring figure of long term Chabrol collaborator (and former wife) Audran‚ who takes it upon herself to try and nurse the younger#woman back from the brink of oblivion. what follows is a quiet‚ unhurried study of a desperate psyche‚ all the more affecting for the#subdued‚ nearly vacant performance Trintignant gives: she is a woman hollowed out by her experiences and her addictions#i was surprised to read reviews with negative responses to the character (even in reviews that appreciated the film); i felt nothing but#pity for poor Betty‚ as much a victim of her vices and her psychological makeup as the people around her‚ perhaps more so#some took issue with the very ending in which she appears to 'win' and to start a new life but i think that reading ignores everything that#comes before: there can be little doubt that Betty will destroy this too‚ that we are simply witnessing the end of one cycle and the#beginning of another. challenging‚ soul searching stuff but a truly great central performance from an actor soon cruelly taken from us