‘Betty’ By Megan Rosenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer September 15, 1993

Director: Claude Chabrol Cast: Marie Trintignant; Stephane Audran Not rated Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

Betty (Marie Trintignant), in a white raw silk, two-piece number, is on a binge. Yet because of her expensive clothes, we can tell she is not just any old slut, but a mysterious slut, hiding some terrible pain behind her enormous eyes. She knocks back le whiskey and les cigarettes as though she is seeking oblivion. Aha! Perhaps this is a clue.

This movie, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, is, unfortunately, nothing but clues. It is the mystery of the Bad Woman: Why is she so immoral? Why does she have no feelings? How can she abandon her children and find her pleasure only in drink and seducing men? Perhaps it was her hard-hearted mother, who sent her away to live with an aunt and her lubricious husband in the country. Perhaps it was her father dying when she was 8.

Perhaps it is just that she is a stupid, unfeeling person. Suffocated by her bourgeois in-laws, deprived of caring for her two daughters by the overbearing nanny, she can think of nothing better to do with her life than drink and take lovers. It is not surprising that her husband eventually tosses her out, at which point all she can think of to do is wander from bar to bar, going home with any greasy old guy who asks her. And all this in one evening!

She ends up in Le Trou (The Hole), where she meets Laure, a fashionable widow played by Stephane Audran. Laure takes care of her, in a luxury hotel; they drink more of ze whiskey and Betty tells her story, which we see in flashbacks.

Betty is one of those women whom people, especially men, find intriguing because she is very beautiful and silent. They think there must be something exquisitely existential behind those bangs. It never occurs to them that perhaps this person has nothing to say.

Trintignant brings little to the role beyond her beauty, including a curvaceous figure (fully visible). Even her tears seem painted on. Audran is always a woman of substance, and seems wasted here in the secondary role of a woman intrigued by someone who is essentially vacuous.

"Betty" is unrated but contains some nudity.

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