Simenon wrote the novel Betty, about a woman who walks into a Paris bar out of the rain. Drunk, unhappy, smoking one cigarette after the next, she is picked up by a man who drives her to a seedy bar in Versailles. The man says he is a doctor but is in fact a drug addict; Betty is rescued by a woman in the bar, a rich widow who offers her a bed for the night in a nearby luxury hotel.

There is no plot, but we are hooked. We do not know who Betty is, why she is drunk, who the widow is, or why she is friendly. We learn more about the bar than its patrons. The place is called The Hole, and it is run by a man named Mario who collects the "twisted" - those with something that sets them outside the ordinary. All of the patrons seem to know about each other's twists.

Chabrol's new film "Betty" is based on the novel. We are able to see how he begins with an actor's face instead of Simenon's blank page. The face belongs to Marie Trintignant, whose father is a famous actor and mother a famous director. It is a pretty face - at times seductive and playful - but when we first see her, she is bruised, there are dark circles under her eyes, she looks as helpless as a drowned cat. All she wants to do is drink and smoke and sleep. If a man will buy her drinks, she does not care what happens then.

Excerpt from Roger Ebert's revieww at the Chicago Sun Times located HERE