Perfectly adorable

disgusting, overrated, pointless

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a handyman working in France, maintaining and looking after the bungalows. He lives a quiet and peaceful life, working diligently and writing in his spare time. One day, Betty walks into his life, a young woman who is as beautiful as she is wild and unpredictable.Although the film is widely praised, it was "hated" by Roger Ebert, who sees it as nothing more than a film about the lead actress being naked a good deal of the time. He says that is the plot, and anyone who gets more out of it is missing the point. Many people apparently miss the point, as the film received both a BAFTA and Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1986, as well as winning a César Award for Best Poster.Ebert exaggerates slightly, but I cannot completely disagree with him. For one thing, I am not a fan of explicit sex is movies as it never serves a purpose. But also, it just is not that interesting of a film. If people were not attracted to the scandalous nature of the film, it would probably not be a cult film today.

Someone commented that she was "borderline." Nothing borderline about her. Straightjacket material early on, & the guy along with her to the back ward for thinking he could "fix" her. Shows how 2 unstable people getting together only multiply the problems for themselves & everyone they touch. Were we supposed to care for these 2? Huh? Well, yes, for the mental health system being sloppy enough to let them roam free & wild, a danger to themselves & everyone else. They needed intensive care from the get-go. "Pretentious" was accurate in another review. To drag this travesty out to 3 hours; yes, the director & the editor should both have gotten the pillow treatment as well.

Another film favorite that was programmed on the Los Angeles Based Z Channel, this was one that I kinda remembered, but had forgotten - basically because of its sadness, and because it was shown in its original language with subtitles. At that time, original foreign films shown in subtitles aren't usually tops on the list of young movie watchers at the time. So I had the opportunity to watch the 3 hour movie recently again, older, wiser and much more interested, and I'm glad I did. I remembered it. This is...a good film. Better impacted in the 80's before we all knew what we know now, but it still does holds up.This is a film of a man who fell in love with the most unpredictable woman he'd ever met. Her unpredictability attracted him, made him fall in love her, and that unpredictability was daring and unique. Going back to that time in the 80's who knew that she was more than just an unpredictable free spirit, she was on the brink of insanity and was losing her grip on what she thought she could control. He did too. And what you have here is a stunning film of love and acceptance of a strong life force entering a dull life and making that life realize that there WAS more to life than what he was living.There is no doubting how the palate of the colors of this film is also central in telling the story, so as you watch, do pay attention for I think its deliberate. And I did love watching Betty as she was not "flawless" but as natural and beautiful as one could be with the nudity involved in the film. (That's why in my reviews I keep using the word "real"). There's some nudity but due to the pacing of the film, it just didn't bother me as nudity for nudity's sake, but just a part of the life these two lovers led.Some will feel that 3 hours is a long time to look at a film, and it can be. But I've sat through 3 hour plus films such as Fanny & Alexander, Heaven's Gate and Das Boot back in the hey-day of the "Z" Channel - and because I found interest in them, the time flew by. Same with this one. It will grab your attention until the end.

I have purchased 37°2 le matin or Betty Blue on DVD about 3 or 4 months ago, mostly because I read a lot about it and despite the 61 comments on this site (62 with mine) and the 577 votes by users from United States (surprise since it was nominated for an Oscar), this title is very well known and not that difficult to find in my country. Anyway, just yesterday I -finally- saw it so the 185 minutes cut of Betty Blue is a near perfect film, certainly not for everyone and I believe you know why. The erotic scenes are there yet sometimes we see unnecessary nudes and some scenes with Jean-Hugues Anglade will make you say, come on man put some clothes on! But we have Béatrice Dalle; both made a great work. Anyway, we have 3 sorts of chapters in the film that we can recognize every time the protagonists, Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Béatrice Dalle), change their place. In the first one we can see how is the life of Zorg, he works for the owner of his and some other houses and he seems to be satisfied with that or at least he understand how are the things. We don't really know how the beautiful Betty entered in his life but we do know how is their relation and how unpredictable things can be and how for an unthinkable factor things can change. I don't think that Zorg would ever imagine that his personal writings, which he used to make just to feel that he was alive, could make him really important for Betty. Since this "chapter" we realize how Betty could react at some difficult circumstances but, of course, as the story grow this reactions gets more and more relevant. Zorg says in the film something like the world is very small for Betty and when she has one thing in mind anything else is careless, so in the third "chapter" they seems to be established, courtesy of their friend Eddy (Gérard Darmon), and ready to be parents but their hope, specially her, will be over soon. As for Betty those things were the only ones in her mind, she was the only one in Zorg's mind, she was his world and she gave sense to his life …This film was based on the 1985 novel 37°2 le matin by Philippe Djian and I know that he really doesn't liked this film. "It's difficult because in the movie you have two characters - in the book I was not sure that I was speaking of two characters. Somewhere in my mind there was only one character who was part male and part female - it wasn't so brutal. If you are a filmmaker, you have to be very light, you have to be delicate. If there is a scene of love in the movie you are not obliged to use music. In this movie and in most movies it's like they're made for children. For example, in Betty Blue I said at the beginning of the book the man has a yellow car and that's all I said. But in the movie from beginning to end you have the yellow car and the yellow car and the yellow car and you have the sunset, and you have the music - so it's too much, it's like pastries - they can be too rich! Each kind of pastry can be good on its own: cream, chocolate, and so on... but if you put them all together, it's horrible!" It may be really interesting to read the novel and if I have the chance to get it, I will not miss it. Meanwhile and anyway, the film is great but it was a fact that I took to long to finally watch it because I felt that it may be a quite difficult viewing but I didn't felt the three hours with this engaging love history that contains explicit, odd, funny, dramatic, love, tragic, etc parts. Each "chapter" is terrific and also quite different from the rest since each takes place in different points of Zorg and Betty's relation yet not in a very long period of their lives. So I, definitely, recommend you this film that definitely is a long way but definitely a great way!