Expected more

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Betty Fisher & Other Stories darts along at a merry old rate, its titular tales moderately interesting in the long run and the film does pass the time in a pleasingly enough manner. In, what certainly feels like, the long run and somewhat immense back catalogue of multi-stranded films interlocking and connecting with a common thematic, Betty Fisher's and her significant "others" is most unquestionably lacking a rawer bite and a more pleasing common thread. Placed into perspective, something like Altman's 1993 film Short Cuts flew past and was a lot longer; Betty Fisher plods along at its own pace and just has you constantly feel 'aware' that numerous tales are going on and that they're going to interlock at some point. Where Altman's opus was a more involving, and felt far less ordained, effort studying the nature of human beings and both mankind's reactions and attitudes towards death; loss and spiritual companionship, Claude Miller's 2002 film sideswipes a glance at motherhood or, specifically, parenthood. In short, it's an interesting enough little drama which doesn't necessarily uproot the trees it thinks it does, but does enough.Observe, if you will, one of the stories therein Miller's piece; a short about a young boy named José living with his mother-plus-male guardian in a rather downtrodden part of a big city. As José sits idly in one scene, unguarded, in front of a television with a collection of other tots, his mother makes love to guardian Francois (Mervil) in a room down the hall and the screen displays a performance by an ice-skater doing their routine. The underlying issues formulate, one of which is more broadly linked to that of how a parent with a child decides to spend quality time at home with it when there are others out in the world whom, for some tragic reason, have lost a child and would no doubt do a great deal to try and recall the opportunity at garnering access to the sort of time José's father has available to him. Secondly, after an idea in regards to the differing attitudes to parenting, the notion of what's playing on the television screen is hinted at as content which could very well be anything; the images captured by way of a collective gaze belonging to that of José and the other kids whom watch on with a stagnant awe at subject matter which is unguarded by those in charge, and might very well have seen them exposed to any kind of imagery.A second adult whom features prominently is the titular Betty, played by Sandrine Kiberlain; a character whose past tragedy in life involves the subjection to a mentally ill mother whilst young and the injuries she suffered at the hands of such a woman. Now grown up, with mother Margot (Garcia) now appearing on the straighter and more narrow having darted over to Spanish tourist spots on the off occasion, she lives as an author in the same urban locale with her very young son Joseph – the film informing us that it will now be providing us with "Joseph's story", and that in itself just somehow manages to set an ominous beginning. Our suspicions ring true, and Margot is responsible for one last slice of agony which deeply embeds itself into poor Betty's life; their bickering downstairs and consequent inability to properly lock down Joseph's room in the evening results in the child clambering where one mustn't clamber before falling to serious injury later resulting in death. Between Betty's rightfully aggrieved reaction, Margot suggests the kidnapping of another boy to fill the void.The aforementioned José is the second child whose "story" we observe, the film's attitude as a piece trying to reflect ideas, content and focus onto its child characters becoming more obvious; José being a young boy out with his suave and fast-talking father, a boy whom must pause with him as he chats or flirts with women out in public before venturing off to that apartment housing said girlfriend; something José must again silently suffer through because of the actions of a guardian. Crudely tied up into all of this is a muddled sub-plot not thematically concurrent to that of the rest of it to do with a young Lothario named Alex (Baer), a man whom gets involved in a real-estate scam and must do what he does to escape a poorer than you'd expect existence. Francois, meanwhile, is trying to find José following the taking of the boy and everybody including José's mother gets mixed up with everybody else as Alex tries to woo her himself.When we observe González Iñárritu's 2006 film Babel, we find common-ground in the reoccurring theme of youngsters underestimating the powers therein their own hands that they most certainly possess; a bolt action rifle in the physical sense on one strand and a more metaphysical item in that of brooding sexuality on the other coming to formulate the lives of, or predominantly that of, adults. Betty Fisher and her Other Stories seems desiring enough to place children at the core of its content around which adults struggle for firm grips on proceedings, but the film is mostly interesting without ever truly taking off, this multi-stranded approach has worked far better in the past in a number of differing films, and it is remarkable just how little most of it actually amounts to.

I find it both interesting and apposite that some of the reviews here invite comparison with the singular world of Patricia Highsmith. There is indeed at times the same air of unreality, amorality and lawbreakers leading charmed lives. The characters may perhaps best be described as separate strands of seaweed on the edge of the Sargasso sea; dead or at least lifeless to a certain extent but with just enough current to prevent them coalescing but touching, drifting apart and touching again. Someone has already pointed out the 'borrowing' from Kubrick and it IS stretching credibility to have Stephen Freiss transporting so much money in such a beat-up attache case, in fact the entire end sequence relies heavily on coincidence that finds three people - one cop on vacation plus two people fleeing for various but linked reasons -converging in the same place at the same time. Nicole Garcia has emerged as a very fine director (L'Adversaire, Place Vendome) and was an equally fine actress as she shows here in a finely judged performance as what might be describes as a Fruitcake's Fruitcake; she kicks off the film by stabbing her own young (ten or so) daughter in the hand for the flimsiest of reasons; years later she inflicts herself on that same daughter (Sandrine Kiberlain), now 1) adult, 2) successful - a best-selling novel, a large house in a desirable location and 3) a mother herself. She finds it strange that her daughter Betty (still bearing the scar of the knife wound) is not prepared to leave her young son alone in the house and go out to dinner and later, walking in the grounds she discovers the body of the boy, her grandson, let us not forget, who has fallen out of the bedroom window, and views it with a mixture of curiosity and detachment. A distraught and withdrawn Betty is hardly a million laffs so Mom thoughtfully snatches the first approximate lookalike she sees and brings him home like a cat brings home a mouse and blithely announces that two friends have gone on vacation and left their son with her. Betty's not buying this for birdseed and the truth does indeed soon emerge but here we are faced with another touch of the Highsmiths; the mother of the kidnapped boy (Mathilde Seigner) is a hooker in all but name and not really concerned that her son has gone missing which is highly convenient. We're now pursuing one plot strand that explores Betty's gradual bonding with the boy, another centered on Seigner's latest live-in (two months) lover, jealous of her involvement with other men and under suspicion himself, sicking the police onto gigolo Stephen Freiss, who may or may not be the father of the missing boy. Freiss's latest conquest, a mega-rich younger woman has improbably gone on vacation for three months leaving him in charge of her very well-appointed house but little else. He mentions his new situation to Seigner over a coffee and she suggests he sell the house, which he proceeds to do. The cops come to the house but figure he's innocent and leave it at that. One of the cops 'plants' the information that he's going on vacation any minute now. A little more of this and we have a set up where Kiberlain is taking the boy out of the country to start a new life, Freiss is also leaving with a briefcase full of bread and a cop and his family are off on vacation, all at the same time and at the same airport. A woman sitting next to Freiss asks him to mind her small boy whilst she goes to the powder room. He is happy to oblige. Cop sees him with boy. Chase. Briefcase opens. Kiss the money goodbye. Meanwhile Betty's plane takes off. If you can swallow all this you'll love it. The acting is of the highest standard across the board. Garcia, Kiberlain and Seigner are three exceptional talents and they are well supported. In short, a winner.

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.

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.