Genre: Romantic Drama | Erotic Art-House | Tragic Love Story

Betty Blue (original French title: 37°2 le matin) is a raw, feverish, and deeply sensual film that pulses with youthful abandon and doomed romance—one of the boldest cult classics of ‘80s European cinema. Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, this iconic French drama is a wild plunge into the reckless passion and madness that can erupt when love burns too bright.

At its heart is the unforgettable couple at the film’s center: Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a laid-back handyman and aspiring writer living in a ramshackle beachside shack, and Betty (Béatrice Dalle, in an astonishing, incendiary debut), a fierce, impulsive young woman who crashes into his life like a thunderstorm and turns his mundane world into a manic fever dream.

When we first meet them, they’re tangled in sheets, laughter, and sex—their chemistry immediate, chaotic, and utterly intoxicating. Betty finds Zorg’s unpublished manuscript and makes it her mission to push him toward greatness. With reckless devotion, she propels them on a spontaneous road trip to Paris to chase their bohemian dreams. But as their passion intensifies, Betty’s volatility begins to spiral into dangerous territory, pulling them both toward an edge they can’t step back from.

Béatrice Dalle’s performance is electric—Betty is wild, magnetic, and heartbreakingly fragile all at once. She’s the kind of lover who burns too brightly to last, a free spirit who can’t be caged by reality’s dull routine. Jean-Hugues Anglade brings a quiet, endearing softness to Zorg, a man swept up in Betty’s storm but powerless to save her from herself.

Beineix directs with a painter’s eye—every scene drenched in vivid neon blues, pinks, and sunlit yellows that echo the characters’ emotional extremes. The visuals are erotic, poetic, and dreamlike, matched perfectly by Gabriel Yared’s lush, melancholy score. It’s the kind of film where the sex scenes are raw and genuine, yet never gratuitous—integral to showing how desire and despair are hopelessly tangled for these lovers.

For all its eroticism and bursts of absurd comedy, Betty Blue is ultimately tragic—a love story about the impossibility of saving someone whose fire burns too wildly for the world to contain. It’s about art and madness, passion and destruction, and the ache of loving someone you know you can’t hold onto.

Nearly forty years later, Betty Blue remains a touchstone of French art-house cinema—a film that dares to follow desire to its bitter, beautiful end. It’s a fever dream of youth, love, and the inevitable heartbreak that comes when reality collides with a romance that could only exist at 37.2 degrees in the morning—burning hot, alive, and destined to fade.