Betty

Claude Chabrol's 1992 film adapts a novel by Georges Simenon. Betty is drunk and bent on wrecking herself; she wanders into a bar in Paris and meets Laure, middle-aged and an alcoholic herself. Laure decides to take her to a hotel room and look after her. As she recovers, Betty starts telling her story: marrying into a bourgeois family, an unhappy marriage, her infidelity and how she was finally thrown out. The film does not lay this out chronologically; remembered scenes bleed into the present and how much of what Betty says is true stays unresolved. Chabrol criticises the bourgeoisie without ever presenting his victim as entirely innocent. The relationship between Marie Trintignant and Stéphane Audran is at the centre. Who it's for: viewers who like Chabrol and Simenon adaptations. Who it's not for: anyone looking for a character to sympathise with; the film withholds that comfort on purpose.