Alias Betty

Sometimes the hardest things are so simple. A lost child is surely irreplaceable, isn't it? Well, that depends on how unconventional you're prepared to be. And if you've got no money but you're left looking after your sugar mommy's house, how to make ends meet? Depends how good a con artist you are. And if your mother presents you with a horribly unwanted gift which you can't return without getting you or her into deep, deep trouble? Maybe it will grow on you. Point of view is everything.

Three people with three problems. But that's just scratching the surface. Mothers, daughters, lovers, husbands, doctors, policemen, smugglers: all of life is here.

Adapted from Ruth Rendell's book "The Tree Of Hands", this French film presents lives less as part of a tree and more as a spider's web. A little tug here leaves a permanent distortion over there and a gap on the far side. Rarely can cinema have produced such a dramatic, amusing yet tense demonstration of the old saw "No man is an island" (though since most of the central protagonists here are female, the well-meaning but philologically-challenged PC lobby might wish for a slight re-phrasing).

With all these "Other Stories" around, there are two obvious potential pitfalls. Switch from story to story too quickly and you just confuse your audience; do it too slowly and they might fail to see the connections. Fortunately this film strikes the perfect balance; admittedly it does this by sacrificing a certain depth of character in some cases, but this simply leaves us wishing this were merely the first installment of a trilogy, or rather, chronologically speaking, the second. It would be interesting to find out how these characters got to where they are now, and, given the way that their actions have such dramatic effects on each others' lives, equally interesting to see how that spider's web changes shape in the future. Given that Betty Fisher herself ends the film about to start a completely new life, anything could happen. 8/10.

I can now understand why authors feel leery about letting screenwriters adapt a novel. First of all, a full length novel doesn't translate well to the screen. There are too many nuances and too many details, that trying to do them all, will humble the most talented scribe.

Take the case of the novel in which this film is based. The Tree of Hands by the magnificent British master of suspense, Ruth Rendell. The adaptation has nothing to do with the brilliant narrative she gave us with this novel. If anyone wants to see the best adaptation of a Rendell book, I would recommend to see Claude Chabrol's, "La Ceremonie".

Not only was that a superior film, but it reveals the essence of the book with little effort.

The problem with "Alias Betty" is Mr Miller's scenario. He has changed the basic premise of the book into something else. Now, don't get me wrong, it is a better film than some of the mediocrity coming from France lately.

The big problem is with the character of the mother. Nicole Garcia is out of her range here. Not only that, one never understands what's wrong with her, even though she appears to be schizophrenic. She's a loose cannon up to no good. In the novel she's even more so.

Betty is ambiguously played by Sandrine Kiberlain, which in a way, suits the character better. She is the only sane person around, even though she is unable to control the mother.

The minor side plots add to the story, but everything at the end is resolved so easily that one wonders if anything like that is possible in life. The films end in an upbeat note, even though it has nothing to do with the original novel.

This is the second adaptation of a Ruth Rendell book that I have seen. The first was the glossy but creepily empty and tiresome La Ceremonie, in which Claude Chabrol's visceral hatred of the bourgeoisie led him to that bloody climax. Claude Miller has done a satisfying version of The Tree of Hands, with a solid script and some excellent performances. Nicole Garcia as Betty's mother is so compelling, so dangerous in her impulsiveness and inability to see the consequences of her actions. I forgot about the stiff chatelaines she usually plays when I saw her look coolly at the little boy lying on the deck, then up at the open window out of which he'd fallen, then look again at the boy while calculating the benefit to her of the boy's death. Truly frightening.

Mathilde Seigner as the single mom whose son is getting in the way of her partying, and Edouard Baer as the gigolo who can hardly believe his luck when he sells a house that isn't his (such an engaging thief!) are both good. Sandrine Kiberlain as Betty is stronger than I am used to seeing her--she often plays bleak loners who resort to prostitution as a quick fix (A Vendre; En avoir, ou pas)--here she has inner resources that allow her to combat her crazy mother, her prying ex-husband and the police kid-hunt.

Miller has a problem that defeats him in the end: how to reconcile the demands of the plot while giving us the fully-realized characters. The end is rushed--I don't blame him for this--and serves to tie up loose ends only. If A and B are shot, then C can make a get away. Still, for the acting, it's one of the best noirs of recent years.

Look at the French title. "Histoire" means story and, as with the English word, implies all story's synonyms. "Histoire," then, can serve as a perhaps gentler "lie." So, "Betty Fisher and Other Stories:" It's a film whose plot is constructed of linked plots, a film in which strangers' stories intersect in ways we've come to think of as Altmanesque. But also, more intriguingly, "Betty Fisher and Other Lies:" Everybody's story involves a lie. Or everybody is a lie.

I booted up here, just now, fearing I'd only pan the film. The round-robin plot relies on glaring improbabilities and deux ex machina transpositions. It's so strongly plotted, I'd thought to say, it could probably survive one of those English language remakes, and weakly enough drawn in many of its characters that a such a remake might stand a rare chance of bettering it. Nonetheless, make a project of finding the "lie" in each character's "histoire." Which characters tell lies? Which lie to themselves, which to others, which to both? Is any character totally sincere? Is any character pure lie?

I'm not entirely sure whether it's the case of an actor stranded in an outrageously unbelievable plot, or of an actor acting for all she's worth to realize that plot, but Betty's plain-faced, ever-stricken, ever-lost expression, more than anything else in the film, stays with me. Though one needs a little French to appreciate it, "Alias Betty" may actually be a quite complex translation.

In the case of Alias Betty, I doubt that life would imitate art...what do I mean by this...well, crimes are committed everyday...murders, thefts, kidnappings...but do we ever feel empathetic with the criminal who commits these acts...in a word, NO! In this foreign film by Claude Miller, he managed to weave several story lines that showed dysfunction to the max. It was a bit difficult to feel any empathy at first with the main character's emotional pain as the character seemed so dispassionate. As the story evolved it was plain to see that the horrific crime committed by the character's mother in hopes of easing her child's pain, or perhaps her own might have been the best solution for all involved. Perhaps the moral of this story is that one doesn't have to be the birth parent to provide a loving and secure home for a child...anyone can be a parent, but not everyone knows how to parent. This film was extremely well done and will leave the viewer with much to think about.