Betty Blue (1986)

Betty Blue (the original French title is 37°2 le matin), released in 1986, is one of the handful of feature films directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix.

Beineix was one of the directors spoken of at the time as an exponent of Cinéma du look, a movement supposedly emphasising style over substance. Like most movements in cinema the label doesn’t really mean all that much. Luc Besson also attracted this label. In fact while they did make stylish movies (which damned them in the eyes of French critics) there’s a lot more substance in their best movies than you’ll find in the films of the earlier Nouvelle Vague.

Zorg lives in a rundown shack in a strange seaside resort composed entirely of equally rundown shacks. He seems to be a kind of handyman.

He has met the most amazing girl, Betty. She’s nineteen and super-cute and super-hot and seems fun and bubbly and she’s great in bed.

Almost all the plot turns result from dramas manufactured by Betty. In this case it’s a pretty spectacular drama.

Zorg and Betty then decamp to Paris where they share a house with Betty’s friend Lisa, a young widow.

Lisa has a new rich boyfriend, Eddy. He gets Zorg and Betty jobs in his upscale pizza restaurant. It soon becomes clear that there is no-one in the world less suited to a career in hospitality than Betty.

They end up running a piano store previously run by Eddy’s late mother in a small town.

Betty has discovered Zorg’s shameful well-concealed secret. He has written a novel. He has never submitted it for publication. Betty reads it and decides that Zorg is a literary genius. There are two things that make her judgment suspect. Firstly, she loves Zorg so naturally she thinks he’s a genius. And it is desperately important to Betty that Zorg should be a success.

The problem is that Betty is very unstable, she has a hair-trigger temper and when she loses her temper she becomes uncontrollable and her capacity for indulgence in self-pity is colossal. A particularly extravagant self-pity episode is triggered by what is in truth a minor setback. Betty treats minor setbacks like full-scale disasters. Betty’s instability has the potential to destroy her and destroy Zorg. But they are madly in love. Can that love save her? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

This movie hits me a bit close to home since I actually had a long-term girlfriend very much like Betty. Just as cute, just as hot, just as unstable, just as crazy. By the 80s such women were being diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder. Whether you buy such psychiatric diagnoses or not such women do exist and Betty certainly fits that mould.

It’s interesting given the movie’s 1986 release date is that any attempt to frame Betty as a feminist heroine is doomed to failure. Betty truly wants just one thing - to be a devoted wife (and she hopes one day to be a devoted mother). She is not a feminist rebel girl and she has zero interest in being a strong, fierce independent woman. For Betty nothing matters except her love for her man.

Betty is a monster, the kind of woman capable of destroying herself and everyone around her. She is a ticking time bomb. Poor Zorg is the kind of guy who meets a psycho chick like Betty and immediately thinks - I can fix her. I can save her. The sensible thing to do is to run away as fast as possible.

But Betty is not a mere monster. For very long stretches she really is sweet and adorable and lots of fun. She is fiercely loyal to Zorg. She has made her choice. He is her man. She would never even consider looking at another man. And while her belief in Zorg’s genius is motivated by her strong belief that she cannot truly love a man unless she can admire him and look up to him that’s not such a bad thing. She really does believe in him, she really will do everything in her power to make him a success, she really will inspire him to believe in himself. There are a lot of things to like about her.

There’s a lot of sex (and it’s reasonably explicit) but their relationship is not based entirely on sex. They have a very healthy very normal sex life. This is a movie that is entirely positive about sex. There’s a lot of nudity, both male and female. Oddly enough it’s the male nudity that is gratuitous!

There are some charming quirky moments and some very romantic moments. This is very much a love story.

Beineix insisted on having Betty played by an unknown and Béatrice Dalle delivers the goods for him.

The director’s cut is very long (a shade over three hours) but the length can be justified since we need to see that for very long stretches of time the relationship is successful and happy and Betty is likeable, cheerful and functional with her psychotic moments gradually having more serious consequences.

Betty Blue is a wonderful movie. Very highly recommended.

I've also reviewed Beineix's Diva (1981).

The Hot Spot (1990)

The Hot Spot is a very very interesting 1990 neo-noir erotic thriller directed by Dennis Hopper.

It starts like a western. Harry Madox (Don Johnson) is the mysterious stranger who rides into town, except that it’s the 90s so he drives. Landers, Texas is a small town that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a western.

Harry talks himself into a job as a car salesman at George Harshaw’s car yard. We have no idea if he’s a decent guy who’s going to land himself in trouble or a bad dude looking for trouble. He doesn’t give much away. He is rather interested in the local bank.

He’s going to get involved with two women either one of whom could turn out to be a femme fatale. The first is Harshaw’s secretary Gloria Harper (Jennifer Connelly). She’s as cute as a button and seems like she’s as wholesome as freshly baked bread. Then Harry accompanies her on a repo job. The car to be repossessed belongs to Sutton (William Sadler) and he comes across as a violent sleazy alcoholic loser. But Gloria behaves very very strangely indeed. And Gloria has a tendency to be jumpy and secretive.

Gloria has a secret. She’s obviously a Good Girl, but probably a Good Girl in Trouble. If a man has any sense he runs the other way at this point. But since when do men behave sensibly about sweet gorgeous girls? Harry’s reaction is the obvious one. He can save her. He can fix her. And this is Noir World so we know Harry’s a goner.

Then he meets Dolly Harshaw (Virginia Madsen). She’s the boss’s wife. The boss’s much younger wife. Harry isn’t totally stupid. He knows you don’t get mixed up with the boss’s wife. But what Dolly wants Dolly gets and she obviously wants Harry. And when it comes to sexy blondes Harry isn’t all that sensible. I mean, she’s making it obvious that she’s there for the taking and what is he supposed to do? He figures it’s just one roll in the hay and that can’t lead to any trouble. One of Harry’s problems is that he’s a bit too confident of his ability to avoid getting entangled in personal dramas.

We soon learn more about Harry’s interest in banking. 

And Harry discovers that he’s well and truly entangled with both these women. Gloria’s secret gradually comes to light and it’s a huge mess that no sane person would want anything to do with but by this time poor Harry has fallen in love with her. 

And Dolly wants more than bedroom shenanigans. She has a plan. Harry wants no part of it but by now Dolly has a hold over him (connected to his interest in banking). 

Bad girls are dangerous and good girls are just as dangerous when they need rescuing. And we’re in Noir World. Who can tell for sure which are the bad girls and which are the good girls?

You can see the kind of nightmare that is waiting just around the corner for Harry and the nightmare does indeed eventuate. A man who likes to be totally in control finds that everything is now totally out of control. 

We can see various obvious ways this could end but the ending we get has a neat double twist and it’s both unexpected and completely satisfying.

Perversity is something we expect in neo-noir and there is some and it comes as a surprise. There’s a fair bit of nudity and sex - this is both neo-noir and erotic thriller and the plot is largely driven by lust and Hopper is quite rightly in prepared to make sure the movie has the required erotic heat. 

Don Johnson is extraordinarily good. He’s charismatic and he nails the contradictions in Harry’s personality - he’s a scoundrel but then he suddenly does something noble and Johnson makes both sides of Harry’s character believable.

Virginia Madsen is clearly having insane amounts of fun doing the full-on femme fatale thing. She’s a joy to watch.

Jennifer Connelly has the toughest part because Gloria is simply swept along by events and she’s a character offering no opportunities for an Oscar-bait performance. But Connelly does a fine job.

There’s a genuine noir atmosphere, a great plot, excellent performances and it’s a visually impressive movie making good use of the Texas setting. A fine directing effort by Dennis Hopper. A top-tier neo-noir. Very highly recommended.

And it looks great on Blu-Ray.

Black Widow (1987)

Black Widow is a 1987 neo-noir and it probably really is a neo-noir if you define neo-noir fairly loosely.

Debra Winger is Alexandra and she’s a Fed. She’s become intrigued by two cases of older very rich men with much younger wives. The two men both died suddenly apparently from a very very rare medical condition. It’s a real medical condition but its rarity makes the coincidence seem just a little odd. The autopsies offer no indications of foul play.

It strikes Alexandra that the two wives looked rather similar. In fact, very similar.

Then another older very rich man with a much younger wife dies suddenly. There are various other odd similarities between all three cases.

Alexandra is convinced that the three wives are all the same woman and that she has now murdered three husbands. Her superior officer thinks she’s go a bee in her bonnet about nothing. The three men appeared to have died of natural causes. Alexandra has zero evidence to back up her hunch.

The audience knows that Alexandra is right. It’s the same woman, played by Theresa Russell. Her real identity is elusive. Her name might be Catherine. For the sake of convenience I’ll refer to her as Catherine.

Alexandra pursues the case obsessively.

At first it’s a hunt. Finding the mystery woman isn’t particularly difficult. She’s now in Hawaii. Alexandra does after all have all the resources of the Justice department behind her. But finding the woman doesn’t help. There is still no actual evidence. It now becomes a cat-and-mouse game. Alexandra is the cat, Catherine is the mouse. It is of course possible that the mouse has teeth, and in such cases it can become unclear as to who is hunting whom.

One criticism levelled at this movie is that the audience knows too much too early but that’s standard suspense movie technique. This is a case where the detective also knows a great deal early on. But knowing the identity of the killer is irrelevant. Alexandra has to find proof. The interest in this movie is provided by the battle of wits between Alexandra and Catherine. Catherine is a very very clever murderess. But Alexandra is a very good very determined cop.

The other major point of interest is motivation. The first murder made Catherine a very rich woman. She has more money than she could spend in a dozen lifetimes. But she keeps killing. Alexandra would like to know why.

In Hawaii some major plot twists kick in and naturally I’m not going to give any hints about them.

There are some interesting supporting players. Nicol Williamson and Dennis Hopper are very good but the only characters who matter are the two women. Debra Winger is excellent but this movie belongs to Theresa Russell. She has the more showy more ambiguous more mysterious and more interesting role and she makes the most of it.

She is very sexy in a very classy way. And she’s fascinating and charming. It’s not difficult to see how Catherine has no trouble acquiring husbands.

In my view in a story such as this it’s a mistake to over-explain things. That’s the mistake Hitchcock made in Psycho. It ended up making Norman Bates less interesting and less scary. When we’re offered detailed diagnoses they always come across as unconvincing and contrived. We already had enough clues to form our own conclusions about Norman.

Black Widow does not make that mistake. Catherine might be motivated by greed but there might be something else. On several occasions she reacts in very odd ways, offering tantalising suggestions that she’s more complicated than she appears to be. There are a number of possible motivations. It could be over-compensation for something. It could be sexual. It could be feminine competition. We get vague hints, which allows us to amuse ourselves by speculating on the basis of those shadowy hints.

What really allows Theresa Russell to display her acting chops to the full is that she is playing the role of a woman who is herself playing various roles. To snare each husband she must adopt a different persona. We cannot be sure that we ever see the real Catherine. Maybe there no longer is a real Catherine.

To make things even more interesting, Alexandra has gone undercover. So she is playing a part as well. There are so many layers of ambiguity and role-playing in this movie and it’s possible that both women have become captives of the roles they’re playing. And the dynamic between these two women is fiendishly complex and Ron Bass’s screenplay avoids the more obvious pitfalls.

What’s even better is that Catherine displays occasional signs of vulnerability and she doesn’t seem as emotionally blank as you might expect from a ruthless murderess. When Catherine cries we almost believe that her emotion is real. And it’s possible that she almost believes it herself. Maybe it is real. Maybe there is real pain there. The fact that we don’t get a detailed diagnosis makes this the most interesting aspect to the film. She’s femme fatale but a complicated one.

The part is a gift for a great actress and Theresa Russell is a great actress and she’s at the top of her game here.

Another strength of the movie is that Alexandra is not one of those female characters who could just as easily have been male. She is obsessed by this case because she knows that this is a killer that only a woman can catch, because only a woman knows what another woman is capable of.

Black Widow is a superb thriller. Very highly recommended.

Jagged Edge (1985)

Jagged Edge, directed by Richard Marquand, is a twisted 1985 thriller that more or less fits into the erotic thriller and neo-noir genres (two genres that overlap to a very considerable extent).

What attracted me to this movie is that it was scripted by Joe Eszterhas and I happen to be a huge admirer of his work. I particularly admire the Joe Eszterhas movies that critics hated.

Jagged Edge begins with the brutal murder of the fabulously wealthy Page Forrester. The ambitious and not very ethical D.A. Tom Krasny (Peter Coyote) decides that Page Forrester’s husband Jack (Jeff Bridges) is the most likely suspect. Jack does have a plausible motive - his wife controlled the purse-strings and he now stands to inherit a vast fortune. The evidence against Jack Forrester is very thin and very circumstantial but the case will be a media circus and successfully convicting Jack Forrester would be very good indeed for Tom Krasny’s political career. Krasny orders his investigators and the cops to ignore all other possible suspects. He intends to nail Jack Forrester.

Jack’s defence attorney is Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close), a brilliant but troubled trial lawyer who gave up criminal work (she had been a spectacularly successful prosecutor) because she got sick of the wallowing in the gutter that was involved. She also quite criminal work because of what she considered to be heinously unethical conduct by D.A. Tom Krasny.

For complicated reasons she agrees to defend Jack.

Naturally Teddy (who is divorced) gets emotionally and sexually involved with her client. This may or may not start to affect her judgment.

She’s fairly convinced that Jack is innocent.

There are inevitably a lot of courtroom scenes. I have never been a fan of courtroom scenes (which tend to be overly talky) but they’re handled well.

As you would expect there are plenty of surprise witnesses and every time the case seems to be shifting in Jack’s favour it starts shifting against him. And Teddy begins to suspect that Krasny may be up to some of his old sleazy tricks.

This also sounds like pretty standard stuff but the expected plot twists are adroitly done and there are some genuinely surprising twists. And the twists just keep coming.

What makes this movie work is that it manages to keep us in doubt about Jack’s guilt or innocence right up to the end. He seems like such a nice charming likeable guy, a guy who couldn’t possibly butcher his wife, which makes us sure he’s innocent. On the other hand he is rather cocky and he does have a very smooth line with the ladies and he does handle his seduction of Teddy like an experienced seducer, which makes us think he might be guilty. He’s such an ambiguous character that we just can’t be sure.

And of course Teddy can’t be sure either. She has to consider the possibility that she is being blinded by emotion. Her judgment might also be swayed by an event in her professional past which I can’t say any more about for fear of hinting at a spoiler.

Jack is a fascinating character and Jeff Bridges does a fine job with the part.

Teddy is an interesting woman. She’s a superb lawyer but she’s under both personal and professional pressure and she’s not handling either very well. What I like most about her is that she’s not a clichéd lady super-lawyer - she has real vulnerabilities and she’s only just holding it together. She’s an actual woman, rather than a Girlpower Icon. I’ve strongly disliked Glenn Close in other movies but she’s really very good indeed here.

There’s only one very tame sex scene but this movie’s claim to being an erotic thriller rests on the possibility of a twisted sexual motive for murder. Once again this movie is nicely ambiguous - it’s not clear if the murder of Page Forrester is a sex murder or not. There’s also a hint of kinky sex.

The movie’s claims to being neo-noir are fairly strong, with the interesting twist that it might involve an innocent man being sucked into the noir nightmare world but Teddy Barnes could also be sucked into that world.

While the plots are quite different Eszterhas’s script here does share some DNA with his script for Basic Instinct. They have a slightly similar feel and tone. Which you would expect. Eszterhas was extremely pleased with Jagged Edge, and rightly so.

I certainly can’t fault Richard Marquand’s directing.

Jagged Edge did extremely well at the box office. It’s a fine thriller with complex characters and relationships and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of the movies written by Joe Eszterhas - Sliver (1993), Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995) and Jade (1995) - and I’ve loved all of them.