Betty’s face dominates the screen as she drinks herself into oblivion at “The Hole,” a bar of misfits and lost souls. Tragic pieces of Betty’s story surface out of order: flashes of a bourgeois life with a dull husband and domineering Psycho-esque mother-in-law, telling bits from childhood and a string of tempestuous relationships with men—all translated by the psychoanalytic commentary of a lover. A self-proclaimed “drunk and whore” whose existence parallels the double life of Chabrol’s other dissolute heroine Violette Noziere, Betty is torn between all of the roles expected of women and her own base desires. Chabrol’s fascination with the feminine continues in this engrossing portrait of a woman emotionally undressing before the camera and her newfound confidant. – BG