Sex Week cinema: "Betty Blue"
March may be cold, but it's hot and heavy here at OnMilwaukee.com as we celebrate our first-ever Sex Week. We're taking a mature look at local video and sex toy shops, area strip clubs, sexy Milwaukee events -- and even some connections between Brew City and Playboy magazine. It's serious, responsible, adult-themed content -- but don't worry, parents, we'll keep it PG-13 in case junior stumbles upon these stories as OnMilwaukee.com turns a pale shade of blue for seven days.
The 1986 French film "Betty Blue" -- directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix -- is hardly a garden of delights from an emotional standpoint and that's what makes it so interesting.
Starring the fetching Beatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade, the film has some very, very blue moments, including an opening sex scene so steamy and conflicting that Lovefilm notes that it is "a perfect set-up for what's to come."
Lovefilm named it the fourth-best sex scene in a movie, writing, "in case anyone thought Europeans were all about the slow burn, there's Betty Blue's incomparable opening sex scene between Betty (Beatrice Dalle) and Zorg (Gean-Hughes Anglade). Shocking at first in its raw intensity, the seemingly never ending intercourse scene eventually elicits laughter along with arousal, fear and confusion. It's a beautiful portrayal of how sex can be both creative and destructive."
Premiere.com includes "Betty Blue" on its top 20 sex scenes of all time, too.
Janet Maslin of The New York Times, however, took a dimmer view of the film and the sex scenes elicited from her little more than concern about a drafty set.
"Too often," she wrote in 1986, "'Betty Blue' has the posturing good looks of a fashion spread and nothing more. Miss Dalle is lovely, but the emotions she displays seem correspondingly shallow. What Mr. Anglade does is more like acting, but it, too, is little more than skin-deep. Speaking of skin, if either of them made it through the filming without catching a bad cold, it's a miracle."
Never mind, rent it anyway and judge for yourself.
Talkbacks
hmf_mke | June 11, 2009 at 8:27 p.m. (report)
This movie also has a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, I own both.
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jjtops | March 19, 2009 at 11:15 p.m. (report)
Betty Blue has always had a place on my personal 10 Best Sex Scenes list--especially for those first 5 minutes!
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sijan_heights | March 12, 2009 at 11:49 p.m. (report)
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