Betty Blue, France, 1986

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If you were an arty, edgy college student in the 1980s, Betty Blue was your movie. It opened with energetic, panting, thrusting physical intimacy that made you long to be French.

Betty Blue, France, 1986. Written and directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix.

Starring: Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Vincent Lindon, Dominique Pinon.

Plot: The movie beings with a young couple making passionate love, panting, sweating, thrashing. The woman is Betty, young and wild, who'd walked into the life of quiet, rural handyman Zorg. They move to Paris, where Betty's attractive unpredictability turns into madness.

Beatrice Dalle as Betty Blue

Critic's view: Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat say Betty Blue is a melodramatic movie which centers on the difficulty of living with a sexually uninhibited free spirit ... The other notable aspect of Betty Blue is that the film has pioneered a relaxed treatment of male frontal nudity.

Critic's view: Melissa Anderson writes in The Village Voice: Betty's episodic crackups, which start with arson, proceed to assault by fork and comb, and culminate in operatic self-mutilation, feel not so much explosive as exhausting. But curvy, ripe Dalle, only 21 at the time and in her first screen role, completely commits to the part.

Buy Betty Blue (Unrated Director's Cut).

Runners-up: Body Heat (1981); The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984); Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986); Sea of Love (1989).

By Athina Simonidou

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