Synopsis
Grieving after the death of her young son Joseph, novelist Betty Fisher enters a dark depression. Hoping to bring her out of it, her mother Margot arranges to kidnap another child, Jose, to replace the son Betty lost. Although she knows it's wrong, Betty accepts Jose as her new son. Meanwhile, Jose's mother Carole is looking for her son with the help of her boyfriend Francois and some of his criminal cohorts.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Sandrine KiberlainBetty Fisher
- Nicole GarciaMargot Fisher
- Mathilde SeignerCarole Novacki
- Luck MervilFrançois Diembele
- Stéphane FreissÉdouard
- Yves JacquesRené le Canadien
- Roschdy ZemDr. Jérôme Castang
- Yves VerhoevenMartinaud
- Annie MercierJacqueline
- Michaël AbiteboulMilo
Recommendations
- 90
Los Angeles Times
A confidently adroit thriller that captures a comprehensive sense of life in an edgy, multicultural and economically diverse Paris. The large cast couldn't be better, but the film belongs to Kiberlain. - 88
Chicago Tribune
What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker. - 80
Dallas Observer
What's wonderful about director Claude Miller's adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel "The Tree of Hands" is its grand capacity for compassion and complexity. - 80
Village Voice
Infusing Rendell's intrigue with warmth and humor, Miller makes the film's sometimes mechanical and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
It's one of the season's most original and energetic movies. - 70
Chicago Reader
As long as Miller simply crosscuts between the machinations of the three mothers, the sociological and psychological parallels are intriguing, but when they're forced to share the same story line, the contrivances and coincidences begin to seem fussily elaborate. - 70
New York Magazine (Vulture)
Complicated thriller that gets more interesting as its complications pile up. - 70
The A.V. Club
A lot goes on, and it doesn't always make sense. But the cast embodies Rendell's ability to incorporate shrewd observations on human behavior into the framework of a crime story, and Miller has a great eye for the places on the Paris outskirts where the lives of haves and have-nots intersect.
