Betty Blue

Béatrice Dalle’s pouty visage became one of the 80s’ most recognisable images after sizzling and shrieking her way through Jean-Jacques Beineix’s cornerstone of cinéma du look. That famous poster might be Betty Blue’s lasting legacy, but it’s well worth remembering the intense, deranged film that spawned it.

Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) strikes-up a passionate affair with Dalle’s eponymous nutcase while working as a handyman in a beach resort, but grows concerned with her often violent mood swings. When Betty burns down their shack the lovers hit the road, doing odd jobs while Zorg attempts to become a writer. 

Beineix’s picture oscillates between exhausting melodrama, gentle romance and outré farce with glorious unpredictability. Dalle’s firecracker and Anglade’s easy-going charmer are perfectly pitched to each other; the former, adored by Beineix’s gaze in a frame of bold colours and dancing light, becoming instantly, utterly, iconic. It might all be more style than substance… but, oh, what style.