Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent adaptation.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Betty is a force of nature who enters the dull but seemingly content life of handyman, Zorg. It transpires that he has written a manuscript, but I got the impression that he had dropped out, not to write, but to escape from the pressures of life/writing, to lead a simpler, less complicated life. And the irony is, once Betty enters, he becomes engaged in life and love due to her erratic, restless/damaged personality,which sees them travel across France.I thought the film was also about escape & frustration. We find Zorg painting shacks as a form of escape (struggling writer). So many of the (minor) characters, Zorg encounters are seeking escape from mundane reality. At the beginning of the film, an elderly guest at the shack shows off to Zorg about his 'girls'; they turn out to be photos from an adult magazine; the young security guard later in the film, reading a porn magazine and becoming transfixed by 'Josephine'; Bob's sexually frustrated wife; even one of the funniest, surreal moments in the film is about escape, when Zorg has to deal with a policeman, following Betty's assault on a publisher, and the two men connect precisely because the policeman is a failed writer who harbours a grudge against publishers.Zorg, himself, escapes into a fictional world as a writer (& perhaps ultimately this is what preserves his sanity in an absurd world); Betty's tragedy is that she cannot cope with real life and expects it to conform to her wishes& she lashes out, against the world, until this anger is turned upon herself. Zorg comes across as more resigned to the bitter realities of life, that 'life is not tailor-made to suit him' (to paraphrase one exchange with Betty), almost detached from life at the beginning of the film until Betty forces him to engage with love and life. Betty is a romantic, an idealist who finds the petty realities of life a trial; she wants, to paraphrase Zorg,' a world that doesn't exist'.It was interesting to read one review that suggested events in the film were in Zorg's head. I won't deny this reading, but I thought the ending was about how Betty, her voice, lived on (resonated) within Zorg. At the asylum, he talks to the sedated Betty about how he still hears her voice but then only finds silence.This may sound bizarre, but films work in clever ways. I found the parrot at the beginning, in Zorg's shack, fascinating. It looks alive at first, but then you realise it is stuffed and fake. And I feel this is what happens to Betty, her tragedy, as she becomes out of control and the doctors fill her full of drugs.Why does Betty gouge out an eye in particular? Perhaps again, it is to do with how she views the world so differently from others, the conventional, and reflected in the blue floor she gets Zorg to paint in their apartment.A film about a doomed love affair, doomed by the intrusion of outside forces and Betty's instability. You feel for the two lovers. Left alone in their idylls, the shacks at the resort at the beginning, the rural retreat above the piano shop, you feel that they might have stood a chance, but destructive forces lie both outside and within so that Zorg and Betty's love affair cannot survive.An unusual film, visually original, I also saw it as a film of contrasts: city/country, light & darkness, (light & shade), heights of joy and depths of terrible sadness & despair, how these can occur almost as if with a trick of the switch (Eddy & his friends dancing happily drunk & the phone call about his mother). And yet Zorg becomes alive again in his relationship with Betty. Perhaps their story is the one he comes to write at the end of the film in his new novel.

I saw this film when it came out in the late 1980s. At that time, I was dazzled by the story and locations and I was seduced by the beauty of the two leading actors. Despite those good points, I didn't like the character of Betty (Beatrice Dalle.) I've just watched the nearly 3-hour Director's Cut on DVD. This time, watching Betty's madness was tedious and downright unpleasant. I still liked the locations and cinematography, but had no patience for watching an off-the-rails, self-centered young woman create havoc and unhappiness for those around her. I still recommend the film to anyone who hasn't seen it, but it's nowhere near as good a film as Beiniex's "Diva."

The theatrical cut of '37°2 le matin' is about a man (Zorg) who is helpless to his sweet girlfriend's inner turmoil. She is unable to help herself and he basically ignores her psychotic episodes probably in hope that things will sort itself out and that any time something happens will be the last time. Despite the English title it's about the male perspective, Zorg's life revolves around this woman for the time they are together, but it's really Béatrice Dalle as Betty who owns the film, even though it kind of stays on the character's surface she comes across as a fascinating, fully realized character. I thought it all comes together splendidly, though, from coherent plot and characters to the mixture of tones.The scenes of madness are tragic but in between those there's much delight with a world that has a subdued magic I'd love to bath in. It's very much the quirky characters around the two that shape that world and they are also responsible for infusing the film with most of the comedy and there are many hilarious moments indeed. The last act principally seemed like a fine conclusion but felt too rushed with the very ending feeling especially anticlimactic and I guess I just didn't want the film to end which is always the most positive possible point of criticism but probably also very much implies that I should watch the one-hour longer "Version Intégrale".And so I did the very next day! The director's cut is a mixed bag. There are quite a few additional scenes that added very little, some of them being more fun than others. One long episode in the middle section of the film that was missing in the theatrical cut did add some depth but wasn't really essential either. I generally don't really care for Zorg's sporadic poetic narration in '37°2 le matin', I thought it didn't add anything and I also found it sadly vulgar which worked against what otherwise seemed like true love between the two protagonists. The DC doesn't add any new narration but some minor scenes that I thought added a bit to the vulgarization like other characters making sexual remarks about Betty and Zorg sniffing Betty's underwear in her absence. But don't get me wrong, them being naked and having sex a lot actually felt very frank and even innocent, it gave the film this very free-spirited atmosphere that I enjoyed. Anyway, in the DC overall one gets a bit TOO much of a feeling of a daily routine setting in for those characters, it hurts the magic a bit and overall the film felt a bit long.What certainly did profit from it was the last act, well, except for one terrible sequence of Zorg robbing a joint in drags that came out of nowhere and tonally felt very much out of place. Other than that new scenes emphasized that Zorg was very concerned about Betty and he really tried to help her even if he was a bit late with realizing the seriousness of her condition at that point. The very end didn't change but it resonated much more with me. This time around Zorg killing Betty seemed like an incredibly selfish act which I figure he did so he would be able to move on with his life. Not an admirable act in the least but I can accept the ending, for Zorg Betty was, for better or worse, merely one chapter in his life (a point driven home by the image of the cooking chili which basically bookended the film), tragic ending, selfish man, but acceptable as a reminder that life's a bitch and all good things must come to an end.Concluding I'd say that the theatrical cut felt complete apart from the rushed ending with the director's cut adding some depth (although not nearly enough to warrant extending the film by over an hour) at the cost of muddling things up quite a bit and maybe even having the film lose some impact. If I was to recut the DC to create the, for me, ideal version of '37°2 le matin' I'd probably remove at least 30 minutes. Anyway, never mind which version, it's a new favorite for me.

There are many very good reviews here, but I just wanted to say that if you watch this excellent film, please make sure you watch the director's cut. I have watched both versions and the clumsily edited 120min version is very poor by comparison with the full length cut. It also leaves some central elements of the film completely and frustratingly unexplained. By contrast, the full version is a compelling story of a particular and intense relationship and it succeeds in raising a number of broad questions about love, passion, loyalty and commitment. I think everyone should watch this film but no one should watch the shorter edit.