MOVIE REVIEW

For a young mother, an unexpected tragedy causes her life to collide with a collection of people with struggles of their own.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

"Alias Betty" is a fortuitous teaming of astute, experienced filmmaker Claude Miller and a renowned mystery writer, Ruth Rendell. The plot is a classic: A shocking incident has a domino effect, disrupting, for better or worse, an ever-increasing circle of intersecting lives.

Events cascade with the speed of a roller coaster, tossed about with shameless coincidence, as the inner lives of characters are illuminated with wit and precision. "Alias Betty" ranges between the tragic and comic, sometimes simultaneously.

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A suspense thriller with a sense of pleasurable unease, the film also serves up a juicy slice of human nature, revealed especially through three very different mothers, played superlatively by Sandrine Kiberlain, Nicole Garcia and Mathilde Seigner.

Kiberlain's Brigitte--an author who writes under the alias Betty Fisher--is a single mother, back in France after three years in New York that yielded a brief marriage to a struggling American journalist, a young son (Arthur Setbon) and an autobiographical bestseller. She has settled into a large residence in an upscale Paris suburb only to have her long-estranged mother, Margot (Nicole Garcia), arrive for an unwanted visit.

Margot suffers from porphyria, the mental disease that afflicted Britain's Mad King George. She swears she has it under control, but Brigitte has doubts. Margot, in her mental condition, commits a wrong that could turn out to be right.

Meanwhile, back in a seedy section of Paris, Seigner's earthy Carole, caught up in men she meets as a bar waitress, is indifferent toward her son (Alexis Chatrian). The boy is then kidnapped, throwing suspicion unjustly on her African live-in boyfriend François (Luck Mervil). François in turn notices Carole becoming drawn again to Alex (Édouard Baer), a forger and con man.

These characters and others collide, sometimes with disastrous and darkly comic misapprehension, while Brigitte flowers as a loving mother. Margot and Carole, from different generations and social classes, provide contrasting negative examples of motherhood; the older woman is self-absorbed in her precarious mental balance, the younger in a pursuit of pleasure as an escape from poverty.

"Alias Betty" is 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.

Unrated. Times guidelines: some violence, sex and language; too intense for younger audiences.

'Alias Betty'
Sandrine Kiberlain...Brigitte/Betty
Nicole Garcia...Margot
Mathilde Seigner...Carole
Luck Mervil...François
Édouard Baer...Alex

A Wellspring release of a co-production of UGC YM, Les Films de las Boissière and Go Films. Writer-director Claude Miller. Based on "The Tree of Hands" by Ruth Rendell. Producers Annie Miller, Yves Marmion. Co-producer Nicole Robert (France 2 Cinéma). Cinematographer Christophe Pollock. Editor Véronique Lange. Art director Jean-Pierre Kohut Svelko. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

At selected theaters.