La critique de Michael Dyckman (fin)

 

Greg Kinnear is at his comic best as the vain actor/soap opera doctor. There are also great supporting performances from actors such as Emmy-winner Allison Janney (The West Wing), Harriet Sansom Harris (Frasier's agent Bebe Glazer), and Kathleen Wilhoite (Chloe on ER). Actually, the supporting cast is a Who's Who of television best character actors.A unique film that is funny one moment and chilling the next, Nurse Betty is a mix of great acting, casting, and a terrific screenplay.

 

During the course of Nurse Betty, title character Betty Sizemore (Renée Zellweger), who hails from Kansas, is once referred to as "Dorothy." This is an entirely appropriate connection, since director Neil LaBute's third feature (in the wake of In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors) is a modern-day fairy tale about a woman who goes on an improbable, fantastic journey, and finds herself at the end of the yellow brick road. But, because LaBute is far from a conventional filmmaker, Nurse Betty is less like a trip through Oz and more like a view of Alice's Wonderland, but through a glass darkly.

 

 

Nurse Betty's two hallmarks are originality and star quality, both of which combine to draw the viewer through the film's occasional rough spots. LaBute has put together an offbeat production that combines elements of fantasy, drama, satire, and black humor. Unlike far too many of 2000's motion picture crop, this one does not seem to have been pressed using a cookie cutter. It has an unusual tone that successfully encourages the willing suspension of disbelief and allows one to become involved in a story that, at least from the outside, is patently absurd.

 

 

Betty is a part-time housewife/part-time waitress living in a small, dead-end Kansas town. She's sweet, oblivious, and innocent, and allows herself to be taken advantage of by everyone around her, especially her philandering husband, Del (Aaron Eckhart). Because her own life is so empty, Betty is a fervent fan of the soap opera A Reason To Love, where her favorite character is Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear).However, aside from getting her daily soap fix, making dinner for her husband, and serving coffee to regulars like the local sheriff (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and the town's only reporter (Crispin Glover), Betty doesn't have much to do.

 

 

Then, one day, a couple of strangers named Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock) arrive at Del's Used Car lot, looking to do business with him. The end up back at his house for drinks, but things get ugly and Del doesn't survive. Unbeknownst to Charlie and Wesley, Betty sees the entire incident.

 

Post traumatic stress from witnessing the murder pushes her into a half-fantasy world where she suddenly believes that characters from A Reason To Love are real people, and that she was once engaged to David Ravell. Armed only with her shaky sanity, she heads for Los Angeles, where her lost love "lives." Meanwhile, Charlie and Wesley, convinced that Betty could be a threat to them, start to search for her.