3 diverse mothers in 'Alias Betty' offer a study in human nature
By Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times
| • | 'Alias Betty'
Not rated (contains violence, sex and language) 101 minutes In French, with English subtitles |
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Events cascade with the speed of a roller coaster, tossed about with shameless coincidence, as the inner lives of characters are illuminated with wit and precision. "Alias Betty" ranges between the tragic and comic, sometimes simultaneously.
A suspense thriller with a sense of pleasurable unease, the film also serves up a juicy slice of human nature, revealed especially through three very different mothers, played superlatively by Sandrine Kiberlain, Nicole Garcia and Mathilde Seigner.
Kiberlain's Brigitte — an author who writes under the alias Betty Fisher — is a single mother, back in France after three years in New York that yielded a brief marriage to a struggling American journalist, a young son (Arthur Setbon) and an autobiographical best seller. She has settled into a large residence in an upscale Paris suburb only to have her long-estranged mother, Margot (Nicole Garcia), arrive for an unwanted visit.
Margot suffers from porphyria, the disorder that afflicted Britain's Mad King George.
Meanwhile, back in a seedy section of Paris, Seigner's earthy Carole, caught up in men she meets as a bar waitress, is indifferent toward her son (Alexis Chatrian).
The boy is then kidnapped, throwing suspicion unjustly on her African live-in boyfriend, Franois (Luck Mervil). Franois in turn notices Carole becoming drawn again to Alex (ƒdouard Baer), a forger and con man.
These characters and others collide, sometimes with disastrous and darkly comic misapprehension, while Brigitte flowers as a loving mother. Margot and Carole, from different generations and social classes, provide contrasting negative examples of motherhood; the older woman is self-absorbed in her precarious mental balance, the younger in a pursuit of pleasure as an escape from poverty.
"Alias Betty" is a confidently adroit thriller that captures a comprehensive sense of life in an edgy, multicultural and economically diverse Paris. The large cast couldn't be better, but the film belongs to Kiberlain.
On the web: http://www.wellspring.com/aliasbetty/home.html
