Excellent but underrated film

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

"Alias Betty" promises more than it delivers. The early scenes, in introducing us to two convincing, lifelike characters, suggest French film at its best--and one just wants to savor the building drama. However, as soon as plot elements begin to insert themselves--a la Hollywood--character development gets circumscribed. Betty Fisher shrinks in stature and in interest as the film progresses, Margot becomes a bit tiresome and disappears, and Carole grows more deviant and is killed off. In other words, all three of these modern mothers are initially more, and are capable of more, than who they become.One never gets the impression that the Betty Fisher we first know---so original in looks, physicality, and response--is going to be a kind of child sop mother. Yes, she does have a fatherless son, and she is determined to do more by him than her neuro-mental mother did by her, but this son is hardly his mother's keeper. Her care for him is not uncompromising--the accident should be proof enough of that--nor is her deep depression over his death anything but understandable, given her personal history. Thus she convincingly maintains this stance with Joe-2, her responses to him being that of any career woman similarly positioned, occasionally sympathetic but generally finding the kid burdensome. But soon the plot starts to get inside her head and wreck havoc with her well based and centered identity. New plot characters begin to proliferate. Maternal clichés start to predominate (teddy bears, Christmas scenes, cute outdoors stuff). Betty the genuine novelist (at least in my mind, and Dr. Francois') becomes the tepid best seller--the kind which gives credence to her hubby's mockery. She is now simply subject to the cues of the plot , and is, as such, less adult, less interesting, less herself, and simply another Alex Basato, who is in the plot (he gets about as much time as she does by this point in the film), but redundant as a character. Margot, Betty's mom, is also loses fluency. Her mighty early notes grow false as her role diminishes. Yes, she can be shrill and perhaps a bit over the top, but she's clearly a sympathetic character, one we want to be part of the dramatic action and its outcome. Again, she descends from being loud, strong, a bigger than life on screen presence who's Betty's equal to being a plot messenger. She delivers Joe-2, and like her daughter, seems sacrificed to him. But Carole, Joe-2's mother, is not lessened by this little rascal--other plot aspects diminish her. But less so, because she emerges later in the film and is already enmeshed in plot, so can only descend less from an intrinsic identity. What Carole begins with is a wide sensual range coupled with an equally broad toughness which strangely seems to attract an array of male types. But her convincing sense of control, which if nothing else, is a foil to the new child-ridden Betty, quickly descends or is absorbed by an imposed role and plot which makes her little more than a warn sex object. The only sort of real character she gets to interact with, apart from her boyfriend, is her bar-tender boss---and he kills her.

It looks like a promising movie, and it is to some extent, but I feel like it failed to show us the characters. The acting was good, but not entirely convincing at times. The movie as far as suspense and such is bad. No suspense, no action, no intensity. I didn't really understand some of the movie, and that may be why I didn't enjoy it.If you like intriguing story lines and (for the most part) a solid movie, this is for you. I won't give anything away, but the ending is a little disappointing. I rate this a 7/10.In case no one knows (but you should), this is a French movie.(My rating) R-Some sexual content/language, and brief violence

Very good French thriller that is even borderline disturbing. A successful author, Betty, gets a visit by her deranged Mother. Betty has a 4 year old Son, which Betty's Mother has never seen before, because Betty was living in New York but now returned to France. But the Mother doesn't care about much else besides herself, and Betty is not that excited with her around. A tragic accident happens when Betty's Son falls out of an upstairs window and dies in the hospital. Then things begin getting very strange, when Betty's Mother kidnaps another 4 year old boy and brings him home to Betty, hopefully to help her with her depression about losing her Son. Weirdness prevails, as we find out about the kidnapped boys real Mother, and she's not much of a Mother, and then we meet a whole slew of new characters that has this movie going in several directions. Betty decides to keep the child instead of going through all the hassles of trying to return him, especially when her Mother says she will deny kidnapping him. Lots of characters, several sub plots, but pretty much all gets resolved in the end when most all the characters meet in unexpected ways with unexpected results. Good movie, keeps you guessing what is going to happen all the way to the end.

Ruth Rendell's novel, A Tree of Hands, was, as most of her work is, brooding, obsessive, and menacing. In Claude Miller's hands, the book has become altogether expatriated. It is now chic, extremely clever, and quite amoral. In short, very French. Briefly, the lives of a successful novelist, bereft of her only child who has just died in a fall, and her mad mother, intersect with those of another mother, a barmaid, who neglects and abuses her child, another little boy, and her taciturn boyfriend. The film cuts briskly back and forth between these two worlds, from the novelist's lovely house in a wealthy Paris suburb, to the bar-resto, hangout for pimps and dealers, where the other woman is employed. It is driven by the mad logic of the novelist's mother and Miller's strength is the insidious way he inveigles the audience into accepting that logic as sane. This is certainly not Rendell, but it is a lot of fun--think a tighter, tauter, altogether more stylish Talented Mr Ripley. The three actresses who play the three mothers jointly won "Best Actress" award at the Montreal Film Festival where the film had its North American premiere.