Metacritic reviews

A confidently adroit thriller that captures a comprehensive sense of life in an edgy, multicultural and economically diverse Paris. The large cast couldn't be better, but the film belongs to Kiberlain.

What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker.

What's wonderful about director Claude Miller's adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel "The Tree of Hands" is its grand capacity for compassion and complexity.

Infusing Rendell's intrigue with warmth and humor, Miller makes the film's sometimes mechanical and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness.

It's one of the season's most original and energetic movies.

As long as Miller simply crosscuts between the machinations of the three mothers, the sociological and psychological parallels are intriguing, but when they're forced to share the same story line, the contrivances and coincidences begin to seem fussily elaborate.

Complicated thriller that gets more interesting as its complications pile up.

A lot goes on, and it doesn't always make sense. But the cast embodies Rendell's ability to incorporate shrewd observations on human behavior into the framework of a crime story, and Miller has a great eye for the places on the Paris outskirts where the lives of haves and have-nots intersect.

Makes for interesting, rather than emotionally compelling viewing.

The good news might be that Huppert wasn't available for Alias Betty, but the bad news is that it didn't stop France from exporting yet one more cold, pretentious, thoroughly dislikable study in sociopathy.