37 (degrees) 2 le matin (version intégrale)
France,
1992, 184 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Jean-Jacques Beineix
- prod
-
Jean-Jacques Beineix, Claudie Ossard
- scr
-
Jean-Jacques Beineix
- cam
-
Jean-François Robin
- editor
-
Monique Prim
- cast
-
Béatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Consuela de Haviland, Gérard Darmon
- source
-
Gaumont
OTHER
An Oscar-nominee for best foreign picture in 1986, Betty Blue, as it was originally shown to U.S. and European audiences in its two-hour version, was a complex tale of love, desire and destruction, revealed in the simplest of languages. Now in the previously unreleased director’s cut—which was ecstatically received in France—Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva; IP5 in this year’s Festival) renders his story more fully and in more intricate terms. Beginning in a sunny seaside town, Betty and her lover, Zorg, start an idyllic life together painting houses. But tragically, and in Beineix’s characteristically episodic style, Betty’s destructive temperament emerges as a force that will divide and change their lives forever. While in the earlier version the film quickly progresses from light and romantic to dark and melancholy, here the two tones are deeply, almost inseparably intertwined, as Beineix ponders the limitations of even the strongest love. With Zorg’s contemplative voiceover, we are now on more intimate terms with Betty; without objectifying her or her pathological need to destroy. Fueled by a dark eroticism, the film explores madness without marginalizing it. Rather Beineix seems to ask if there even exists a normal way to love. Betty Blue remains an erotic and disturbing voyage where love and madness intersect.
—Lisanne Skyler
FACTOID #97
Actor Franchot Tone, the former husband of Joan Crawford, was the master of ceremonies at the first festival in 1957.
