Alias Betty

Opening with a startling attack against a child by a woman wielding a pair of scissors, this crafty suspense film (based on Ruth Rendell's The Tree of Hands) flashes forward to show the scarred hand of the grown victim, Betty (Sandrine Kiberlain), a bestselling novelist (now a mom herself), whose subtly unhinged and abusive mother, Margot (Nicole Garcia), is still hanging around. When Betty's very young son dies in an accidental fall, Margot kidnaps a similar-looking kid to provide her daughter with a surrogate, a misguided act of relative kindness that sets in motion numerous repercussions involving the kidnapped child's uncaring mother, her boyfriend who is suspected of the crime, and a bunch of other rather unsavory characters. While a bit long on contrivance, Claude Miller's dexterously directed thriller ultimately evokes Hitchcock with its delicious twists and turns. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a 16-minute making-of featurette, filmographies, a trailer, weblinks, and “A Sampling of Modern French Films” trailer gallery. Bottom line: Given the lack of extras on most foreign entries, even a "making-of" is a notable addition to this worthwhile film.] (T. Rich)