| Betty Blue | |
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Simulation of the Italian-language film poster |
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| Directed by | Jean-Jacques Beineix |
| Produced by | Jean-Jacques Beineix |
| Written by | Jean-Jacques Beineix Philippe Djian (novel) |
| Starring | Jean-Hugues Anglade Béatrice Dalle Vincent Lindon Dominique Pinon |
| Music by | Gabriel Yared |
| Cinematography | Jean-François Robin |
| Editing by | Monique Prim |
| Distributed by | Alive Films |
| Release date(s) | 7 November 1986 |
| Running time | 120 minutes (185 minutes - Director's cut 2004) |
| Language | French |
Betty Blue is a 1986 French film. Its original French title is 37°2 le matin, which means "37.2°C in the Morning". (37.2°C [99°F] is the normal morning temperature of a pregnant woman.) The film was directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix and stars Béatrice Dalle as Betty. It is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Philippe Djian.
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. In 1992 it was awarded the Golden Space Needle of the Seattle International Film Festival.
In 2005 a 'Director's Cut' was issued of this film, with about an hour of extra footage.
Betty (Dalle) and Zorg (Anglade) are passionate lovers who live in a shack on the beach. He works as a handyman who does odd jobs to pay the bills. As the film begins, they have only been dating for a week and are in a very passionate stage of their relationship. Zorg narrates the story of their relationship via voiceover. He describes Betty as “like a flower with translucent antennae and a mauve plastic heart”. She yearns for a better life and quit her last job as a waitress because she was being sexually harassed by her boss.
Zorg's boss asks him to paint the 500 shacks that populate the beach—a fact that he keeps from Betty who thinks they only have to do one. She attacks the project with enthusiasm that quickly turns to anger once she learns the actual number. In response, Betty covers the boss’s car with pink paint.
During a nasty fight, Betty accidentally discovers a series of notebooks that contain a novel Zorg wrote years ago. She reads it and falls in love with him even more. She then makes it her mission in life to type every hand-written page and get it published. Betty's free spirited nature and devotion to Zorg develop into alarming obsession, aggression and destructiveness, and the film alternates between comic and tragic modes.
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