Someone commented that she was "borderline." Nothing borderline about her. Straightjacket material early on, & the guy along with her to the back ward for thinking he could "fix" her. Shows how 2 unstable people getting together only multiply the problems for themselves & everyone they touch. Were we supposed to care for these 2? Huh? Well, yes, for the mental health system being sloppy enough to let them roam free & wild, a danger to themselves & everyone else. They needed intensive care from the get-go. "Pretentious" was accurate in another review. To drag this travesty out to 3 hours; yes, the director & the editor should both have gotten the pillow treatment as well.

I don't know how often I have seen Betty Blue/37°2 le matin. But every time I still see things anew. The complexity of Betty, he passionate devotion to Zorg. The care Zorg gives her, it is how relations are or should be. Including all the quarrels and arguments.I have no idea where this film works on my emotional state of being. But the first half I always laugh my head off and the second part always ends with me crying uncontrollable. This is sometimes my reason for watching: this film clears my emotional systems.I have worked and spent many a holiday in France. This film, to me, shows the intensity of French people with life and relations. If you want to learn about the French and their ways, watching this film is a very intense start.

There are many very good reviews here, but I just wanted to say that if you watch this excellent film, please make sure you watch the director's cut. I have watched both versions and the clumsily edited 120min version is very poor by comparison with the full length cut. It also leaves some central elements of the film completely and frustratingly unexplained. By contrast, the full version is a compelling story of a particular and intense relationship and it succeeds in raising a number of broad questions about love, passion, loyalty and commitment. I think everyone should watch this film but no one should watch the shorter edit.

I have purchased 37°2 le matin or Betty Blue on DVD about 3 or 4 months ago, mostly because I read a lot about it and despite the 61 comments on this site (62 with mine) and the 577 votes by users from United States (surprise since it was nominated for an Oscar), this title is very well known and not that difficult to find in my country. Anyway, just yesterday I -finally- saw it so the 185 minutes cut of Betty Blue is a near perfect film, certainly not for everyone and I believe you know why. The erotic scenes are there yet sometimes we see unnecessary nudes and some scenes with Jean-Hugues Anglade will make you say, come on man put some clothes on! But we have Béatrice Dalle; both made a great work. Anyway, we have 3 sorts of chapters in the film that we can recognize every time the protagonists, Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Béatrice Dalle), change their place. In the first one we can see how is the life of Zorg, he works for the owner of his and some other houses and he seems to be satisfied with that or at least he understand how are the things. We don't really know how the beautiful Betty entered in his life but we do know how is their relation and how unpredictable things can be and how for an unthinkable factor things can change. I don't think that Zorg would ever imagine that his personal writings, which he used to make just to feel that he was alive, could make him really important for Betty. Since this "chapter" we realize how Betty could react at some difficult circumstances but, of course, as the story grow this reactions gets more and more relevant. Zorg says in the film something like the world is very small for Betty and when she has one thing in mind anything else is careless, so in the third "chapter" they seems to be established, courtesy of their friend Eddy (Gérard Darmon), and ready to be parents but their hope, specially her, will be over soon. As for Betty those things were the only ones in her mind, she was the only one in Zorg's mind, she was his world and she gave sense to his life …This film was based on the 1985 novel 37°2 le matin by Philippe Djian and I know that he really doesn't liked this film. "It's difficult because in the movie you have two characters - in the book I was not sure that I was speaking of two characters. Somewhere in my mind there was only one character who was part male and part female - it wasn't so brutal. If you are a filmmaker, you have to be very light, you have to be delicate. If there is a scene of love in the movie you are not obliged to use music. In this movie and in most movies it's like they're made for children. For example, in Betty Blue I said at the beginning of the book the man has a yellow car and that's all I said. But in the movie from beginning to end you have the yellow car and the yellow car and the yellow car and you have the sunset, and you have the music - so it's too much, it's like pastries - they can be too rich! Each kind of pastry can be good on its own: cream, chocolate, and so on... but if you put them all together, it's horrible!" It may be really interesting to read the novel and if I have the chance to get it, I will not miss it. Meanwhile and anyway, the film is great but it was a fact that I took to long to finally watch it because I felt that it may be a quite difficult viewing but I didn't felt the three hours with this engaging love history that contains explicit, odd, funny, dramatic, love, tragic, etc parts. Each "chapter" is terrific and also quite different from the rest since each takes place in different points of Zorg and Betty's relation yet not in a very long period of their lives. So I, definitely, recommend you this film that definitely is a long way but definitely a great way!