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Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Betty Fisher & Other Stories darts along at a merry old rate, its titular tales moderately interesting in the long run and the film does pass the time in a pleasingly enough manner. In, what certainly feels like, the long run and somewhat immense back catalogue of multi-stranded films interlocking and connecting with a common thematic, Betty Fisher's and her significant "others" is most unquestionably lacking a rawer bite and a more pleasing common thread. Placed into perspective, something like Altman's 1993 film Short Cuts flew past and was a lot longer; Betty Fisher plods along at its own pace and just has you constantly feel 'aware' that numerous tales are going on and that they're going to interlock at some point. Where Altman's opus was a more involving, and felt far less ordained, effort studying the nature of human beings and both mankind's reactions and attitudes towards death; loss and spiritual companionship, Claude Miller's 2002 film sideswipes a glance at motherhood or, specifically, parenthood. In short, it's an interesting enough little drama which doesn't necessarily uproot the trees it thinks it does, but does enough.Observe, if you will, one of the stories therein Miller's piece; a short about a young boy named José living with his mother-plus-male guardian in a rather downtrodden part of a big city. As José sits idly in one scene, unguarded, in front of a television with a collection of other tots, his mother makes love to guardian Francois (Mervil) in a room down the hall and the screen displays a performance by an ice-skater doing their routine. The underlying issues formulate, one of which is more broadly linked to that of how a parent with a child decides to spend quality time at home with it when there are others out in the world whom, for some tragic reason, have lost a child and would no doubt do a great deal to try and recall the opportunity at garnering access to the sort of time José's father has available to him. Secondly, after an idea in regards to the differing attitudes to parenting, the notion of what's playing on the television screen is hinted at as content which could very well be anything; the images captured by way of a collective gaze belonging to that of José and the other kids whom watch on with a stagnant awe at subject matter which is unguarded by those in charge, and might very well have seen them exposed to any kind of imagery.A second adult whom features prominently is the titular Betty, played by Sandrine Kiberlain; a character whose past tragedy in life involves the subjection to a mentally ill mother whilst young and the injuries she suffered at the hands of such a woman. Now grown up, with mother Margot (Garcia) now appearing on the straighter and more narrow having darted over to Spanish tourist spots on the off occasion, she lives as an author in the same urban locale with her very young son Joseph – the film informing us that it will now be providing us with "Joseph's story", and that in itself just somehow manages to set an ominous beginning. Our suspicions ring true, and Margot is responsible for one last slice of agony which deeply embeds itself into poor Betty's life; their bickering downstairs and consequent inability to properly lock down Joseph's room in the evening results in the child clambering where one mustn't clamber before falling to serious injury later resulting in death. Between Betty's rightfully aggrieved reaction, Margot suggests the kidnapping of another boy to fill the void.The aforementioned José is the second child whose "story" we observe, the film's attitude as a piece trying to reflect ideas, content and focus onto its child characters becoming more obvious; José being a young boy out with his suave and fast-talking father, a boy whom must pause with him as he chats or flirts with women out in public before venturing off to that apartment housing said girlfriend; something José must again silently suffer through because of the actions of a guardian. Crudely tied up into all of this is a muddled sub-plot not thematically concurrent to that of the rest of it to do with a young Lothario named Alex (Baer), a man whom gets involved in a real-estate scam and must do what he does to escape a poorer than you'd expect existence. Francois, meanwhile, is trying to find José following the taking of the boy and everybody including José's mother gets mixed up with everybody else as Alex tries to woo her himself.When we observe González Iñárritu's 2006 film Babel, we find common-ground in the reoccurring theme of youngsters underestimating the powers therein their own hands that they most certainly possess; a bolt action rifle in the physical sense on one strand and a more metaphysical item in that of brooding sexuality on the other coming to formulate the lives of, or predominantly that of, adults. Betty Fisher and her Other Stories seems desiring enough to place children at the core of its content around which adults struggle for firm grips on proceedings, but the film is mostly interesting without ever truly taking off, this multi-stranded approach has worked far better in the past in a number of differing films, and it is remarkable just how little most of it actually amounts to.

Claude Miller's film, 'Betty Fisher and Other Stories' is both clever and supremely watchable, featuring a carefully (though not overdone) interlinked set of stories involving interesting and original characters, who attract varying degrees of sympathy from their audience, and set in a very believable rendering of modern Paris. Yet perhaps because it follows so many stories there's a sense that it skims lightly over them all: I didn't care so powerfully about any individual in the film. The result is a movie that's darkly entertaining, uniformly well-acted and skillfully directed, but emotionally detached.

"Alias Betty" promises more than it delivers. The early scenes, in introducing us to two convincing, lifelike characters, suggest French film at its best--and one just wants to savor the building drama. However, as soon as plot elements begin to insert themselves--a la Hollywood--character development gets circumscribed. Betty Fisher shrinks in stature and in interest as the film progresses, Margot becomes a bit tiresome and disappears, and Carole grows more deviant and is killed off. In other words, all three of these modern mothers are initially more, and are capable of more, than who they become.One never gets the impression that the Betty Fisher we first know---so original in looks, physicality, and response--is going to be a kind of child sop mother. Yes, she does have a fatherless son, and she is determined to do more by him than her neuro-mental mother did by her, but this son is hardly his mother's keeper. Her care for him is not uncompromising--the accident should be proof enough of that--nor is her deep depression over his death anything but understandable, given her personal history. Thus she convincingly maintains this stance with Joe-2, her responses to him being that of any career woman similarly positioned, occasionally sympathetic but generally finding the kid burdensome. But soon the plot starts to get inside her head and wreck havoc with her well based and centered identity. New plot characters begin to proliferate. Maternal clichés start to predominate (teddy bears, Christmas scenes, cute outdoors stuff). Betty the genuine novelist (at least in my mind, and Dr. Francois') becomes the tepid best seller--the kind which gives credence to her hubby's mockery. She is now simply subject to the cues of the plot , and is, as such, less adult, less interesting, less herself, and simply another Alex Basato, who is in the plot (he gets about as much time as she does by this point in the film), but redundant as a character. Margot, Betty's mom, is also loses fluency. Her mighty early notes grow false as her role diminishes. Yes, she can be shrill and perhaps a bit over the top, but she's clearly a sympathetic character, one we want to be part of the dramatic action and its outcome. Again, she descends from being loud, strong, a bigger than life on screen presence who's Betty's equal to being a plot messenger. She delivers Joe-2, and like her daughter, seems sacrificed to him. But Carole, Joe-2's mother, is not lessened by this little rascal--other plot aspects diminish her. But less so, because she emerges later in the film and is already enmeshed in plot, so can only descend less from an intrinsic identity. What Carole begins with is a wide sensual range coupled with an equally broad toughness which strangely seems to attract an array of male types. But her convincing sense of control, which if nothing else, is a foil to the new child-ridden Betty, quickly descends or is absorbed by an imposed role and plot which makes her little more than a warn sex object. The only sort of real character she gets to interact with, apart from her boyfriend, is her bar-tender boss---and he kills her.

In the case of Alias Betty, I doubt that life would imitate art...what do I mean by this...well, crimes are committed everyday...murders, thefts, kidnappings...but do we ever feel empathetic with the criminal who commits these acts...in a word, NO! In this foreign film by Claude Miller, he managed to weave several story lines that showed dysfunction to the max. It was a bit difficult to feel any empathy at first with the main character's emotional pain as the character seemed so dispassionate. As the story evolved it was plain to see that the horrific crime committed by the character's mother in hopes of easing her child's pain, or perhaps her own might have been the best solution for all involved. Perhaps the moral of this story is that one doesn't have to be the birth parent to provide a loving and secure home for a child...anyone can be a parent, but not everyone knows how to parent. This film was extremely well done and will leave the viewer with much to think about.