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 |
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Music by | Gabriel Yared |
Cinematography | Jean-François Robin |
Edited by | Monique Prim |
Distributed by | Gaumont |
Release date
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Running time
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120 minutes (185 minutes - Director's cut 2004) |
Country | France |
Language | French |
Box office | $29.2 million |
Betty Blue is a 1986 French film. Its original French title is 37° 2 le matin, meaning "37.2°C in the morning" (the normal temperature of a pregnant woman in the morning). The film was directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix and stars Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade. It is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Philippe Djian. The film had 3,632,326 admissions and was the eighth highest grossing film of the year in France.
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, with about an hour of extra footage.
Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a 34-year-old aspiring writer making a living as a handyman for a community of beach houses at Gruissan. He meets 19-year-old Betty (Béatrice Dalle), a volatile and impulsive young woman, and the two begin a passionate affair, living in his borrowed shack on the beach. After a row with him where she tears apart and smashes up the house, she finds the manuscript of his first novel, reads it in one long sitting and decides he is a genius. However, after another argument with his boss, she empties the shack and burns it down. The two decamp to the outskirts of Paris, where her friend Lisa (Consuelo de Haviland) has a small hotel. Betty laboriously types out Zorg's novel and submits it to various publishers. They meet Lisa's new boyfriend Eddy (Gérard Darmon), and the four have many fun times, often fueled by copious amounts of alcohol. They find work in Eddy's pizzeria but a fight erupts in which Betty stabs a customer with a fork. Zorg tries to slap her back to her senses.