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ALIAS BETTY
"Claude Miller's finely layered screen adaptation
of Ruth Rendell's novel 'Tree of Hands' is such an accomplished
piece of filmmaking that it interweaves enough characters and themes
to fill three movies...Although plenty of emotional fireworks detonate,
'Alias Betty' maintains a chilly composure while following its volatile
characters around...At heart the movie is a deftly wrought suspense
yarn whose richer shadings work as coloring rather than substance...'Alias
Betty' ultimately rests on the slim shoulders of Ms. Kiberlain,
whose Betty is deeply touching without a hint of sentimentality."
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Stephen Holden,
The New York Times
"In some respects, Mr. Miller's opus may seem too facile for some
tastes. Still, Ms. Khiberlain, Ms. Garcia and Ms. Seigner brilliantly
play the three mothers like a dissonant string trio on a single theme:
the varied agonies of motherhood...Still, I remain suspicious of redemptive
motherhood as a rebuke to 'extreme' feminism, and of the treatment
with kid gloves of the film's token African character. It is all too
easy." -- Andrew Sarris,
The New York Observer
"Miller is known as a gifted director of actresses, and the leading
ladies here do not disappoint. Betty, Margot, and Carole may represent
radically different styles of motherhood, but they're also sympathetic
(even if batty or violent) and marvelously vivid. 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." --
Leslie Camhi, The Village Voice
"'Alias Betty' works as a decent urban thriller. And, on a different
level entirely, it's about just why right is right, wrong is wrong,
right might be wrong and wrong might be right. And what it all implies
about playing dice with the universe." --
John Anderson, Newsday
"...Claude Miller takes that basic story and weaves it together with
stories about the kidnapped boy's mother and other characters and
comes up with a stylish thriller...Despite a contrived ending that
brings together all the film's characters, 'Alias Betty' is inventive
filmmaking." -- V.A. Musetto, The
New York Post
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