A drunken, self-destructive woman called Betty wanders into a Parisian bar where she meets middle-aged alcoholic Laure. Laure decides to take care of Betty. Recovering in a hotel room, Betty begins to recount to Laure the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy and unfaithful marriage.
Acting
Trintignant's unraveling is surgical, devastating, never showy.
Direction
Chabrol's cold eye finds horror in polite dinner parties.
Writing
Adapted from Simenon; every sentence wounds someone.
Director
Claude Chabrol
Marie Trintignant
Betty Etamble
Stéphane Audran
Laure
Jean-François Garreaud
Mario
Yves Lambrecht
Guy Etamble
Christiane Minazzoli
Madame Etamble
Pierre Vernier
Le médecin
Thomas Chabrol
Schwartz
Pierre Martot
Frédéric
Yves Verhoeven
Philippe
Henri Attal
Un client du Trou
Brigitte Chamarande
Odette
Raoul Curet
Le notaire
Julie Marboeuf
Elda
Jean-Marc Roulot
Florent
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Chabrol was the most Hitchcockian of the French New Wave, and this is his most psychologically claustrophobic character study — Simenon by way of Sartre.
Marie Trintignant and director Chabrol had a notoriously difficult working relationship; she reportedly found his detached cruelty as a director exhausting, which perhaps fed her performance.
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