Betty Blue: Original Theatrical Release [Blu-ray]

I ordered this movie because when I first saw it upon it's theatrical release it was , at least , an hour shorter. that version really Talked to me as it showed her creative, rich and passionate life in full detail!!! she was a fully- armored bunny almost the sister of the Baby Athene....if you can picture that instead of a spear Betty had a paintbrush. it didn't hurt that the person in this role, Beatrice Dalle, had the most female of desirous bodies mixed with fun and sin and accented by the eyes of a litter of baby deer and ummmm...these ..lips that aaaaaaaa must help her in pronouncing her letters !! it is to fall in love and then to witness her crash, burn and just break one's heart !!! I cried for so long, not for her collapse, but I identified sooo much with this character.!! if she read my mind, it could not have been any more like me. SHE wasn't going through this nightmare in film ...I was !! she wasn't dying inside...I was !! I was unable to leave the theater for a half-hour, at least !! I had to have help getting home....I kind of DIED right there . (this story is NOT an exaggeration for ME in the least!). I recovered after a while and figured out what had happened and it eventually made sense- a lot of parallels between our lives, and all at the same exact time !! I felt shot and abused and ripped in shreds and all within 90 minutes!! a SHOCK ! ! ! but, now the Film: the film that I just got from the internet through Amazon is a "Director's Edition " over an hour longer !! and it's just 'padding' !! no extra insights. no jokes. no funny walks!! and what seems shocking (the speed of Collapse !!) takes a long while so the impact is softened and so on. this film should have both versions for comparison. anyway :original 5* and Plus Grand: 3* one * is for Anglade alone who is really great!! (sorry I ran so long w/this feedback but it brought back memories)

Five stars for the movie - ZERO STARS FOR THE CENSORSHIP!I decided to give 5 stars only not to have this caution relegated to the end of the line and thus hidden from cinephiles.The Korean import which purports to be the "director's cut" is actually HEAVILY CENSORED by "modesty blurs" whenever there is frontal nudity. One would think the movie had been edited for Francoist Spain of the 1960s. Some prudish and arrogant censors decided to interfere with Jean-Jacques Beneix's creation and plastered it with pasties! The sorry result is obviously not what Jean-Jacques Beneix had in mind but what the South Korean government allows you to see. So, there you are: a free citizen in a free country whose viewing freedom is limited by the diktats of a foreign government.This is no longer the director's cut but the CENSOR'S CUT! On and on, one has to suffer the censor's interferences: a third party that keeps intruding into your viewing experience to impose his values, to decide what's best for you. An absolutely unbearable experience.According to Wikipedia's article "Film censorship in South Korea," such practices are routine official policy: "In recent years, sexual scenes have been a major issue that pits filmmakers against Media Rating Board. Pubic hair and male or female genitalia is disallowed on the screen, unless they are digitally blurred."THIS IS A MUTILATED MOVIE! Shame on the state censorship that perpetrated this atrocity!Moreover, the following "Special Features": "Synopsis", "Cast & Crew biographies", "Director's Interview (text)" are all in the Korean language and useless to most viewers.These unacceptable flaws lead me to be wary of all Korean imports.

I watched this film at nineteen years-old just a few years after its release. Offhand thoughts on a 25 year revisit of the film by one who had some identification with the Betty character in youth (contains some spoilers):Character of Dalle as Betty still holds, Femme Fatale Woman-Child who is lost, mercifully found and ultimately lost living out the trajectory of a fateful life. Symptoms bear likeness to a Borderline Personality rather than the viewer speculations of Bipolar Disorder Schizophrenia or the catch-all of "insanity". From a character perspective what was more poignant to me in this second viewing is the character of her lover, Zorg, Betty's lover (played with adept beautyby Anglade). At Betty's obsession with trying to get his novel published to an indifferent world, he takes alternative routes when it is u accepted. He attempts "publish" it with new scenery to call home, a possible baby, stolen money- all to save her from herself. The most poignant scene for me is after Betty finds she is not pregnant, no child, no new life within. She sits hair chopped, bright lipstick drawn and smudged, face powdered like a tragic clown. The viewer feels like a voyeur watching Zorg watch her. He drinks in the scene slowly and fully, finally doing the most selfless thing he can think to do. He slowly and absolutely pours brightly colored thick soup through his hair and face, her clown face matching his as he breaks himself to counter her alienation. The arc of the film leads the viewer to see the last scene between the two as the ultimate gift a lover can give such a circumstances. Zorg arrives at a hospital to see Betty after she has plucked out an eye, unable to handle seeing through two any longer into a world that shines brighter and burns hotter than what most see. When the nurse asks if he is her husband or relative he answers, "No, I am everything else." As she lie in a hospital deemed insane by doctors, he realizes that he can no longer save her but that, "nothing can tear them apart". He straps her tightly within the straightjacket binding her and smothers with her pillow. Her final kicks of resistance seem a courageous last effort to counter the forces she has struggled to survive through life.Regardless of liking the film or not, recurrent piano melody with inevitably haunt anyone who has watched. Within the first few familiar notes a sirens call emerges drawing one to continue watching even if wishing to stop. It lulls one into their blue ocean; slightly off kilter notes feel like a sailboats choppy clip through a breezy waters as seductive as Betty is at the films opening when she shamelessly inserts herself into Zorgs world.Jean-Jacques Bieniex direction is classic cinéma du luc which dominated French film-making of the 1980's. For those who wish to see sweeping non-naturalistic photography of a beautiful era in France which harbors these two gorgeously developed lost souls then watch!!!The film was nominated for a BAFTA and Best Foreign Laungauge Oscar in 1986.It is well worth languishing in its three-hour run time and, as for me 25 years later, it won't be forgotten.

Long, but it held my attention. It's not enjoyable to watch a person lose their sanity. But the love the two shared, and the way he supported her, made it memorable. It struck me how the nudity was completely natural. The supporting actors (the landlord, the widow and her friend, and the neighbor) all add a lot and make the film what it is.