BETTY

The movie BETTY tells the story of a young woman bent on destruction who gives up her family and friends to satisfy her lust. When we first encounter Betty, she has been picked up by Bernard, a doctor who appears normal. He takes her to a bar called the “Hole,” a place that seems to be like hell. After their arrival, with scalpel in hand, Bernard offers to remove the worms under Betty’s skin after she scratches nervously, but the authorities drag Bernard away before he inflicts any harm. Then Laure sits next to her, and they begin a friendship. Betty appears to suffer a nervous breakdown in the bar, and Laure takes her to her hotel room and nurses her back to health. After this, Betty steals Laure’s boyfriend from her. In the film, Betty is portrayed as both victim and predator, although the issue of her true nature is never resolved.

In some ways, BETTY is high art. The celebrated French director, Claude Chabrol, uses numerous techniques, including stream of consciousness, to tell Betty’s sad and pathetic story. Betty has given up everything to pursue a life of dissipation. Chabrol, however, fails to satisfy audience expectations when he allows serious inconsistencies in Betty’s personality to go without resolution. The movie also contains numerous explicit sexual encounters and full frontal female nudity, and the audience is forced to endure numerous, explicit sexual encounters.