This psychological thriller, adapted from renowned crime writer Ruth Rendell's (La Cérémonie) novel, A Tree of Hands, revolves around three very different women whose mothering styles form the foundation for a dramatic series of events. Laid out as distinct chapters, each one telling the story of an individual character, Brigitte - alias Betty - is at its center. Named Brigitte by her mother, Margot, Betty prefers the pen name she chose for herself and would perhaps prefer a different mother as well.

The film opens with a flashback. Betty is a young girl traveling on a train. Her mother sits next to her and holds her gently. Margot abruptly goes into an uncontrollable rage and violently punctures the girl through the hand with a scissors. She suffers from porphyry, an illness that brings on short but very violent outbursts. Fast forward to the scarred hand of Betty many years later as she arrives at the airport in France with her young son, Joseph. Now the author of a best selling novel, Betty is retreating from the tiresome fast lane of New York City that followed the success of her book, and from her son's poet father, Edouard. Setting the tone for her conflicted emotions when she becomes a mother herself, her book has drawn on her painful past.

Shortly after Betty and Joseph settle in, Margot arrives for a visit. She's been living in Spain with Betty's long-suffering father and has come to Paris for some medical tests, presumably to control her "condition." Predictably, she brings more than the usual baggage and displays little improvement in her ability to nurture. When an accident leaves Betty paralyzed with grief over the loss of Joseph, Margot intervenes with an impulsive act that sets in motion a series of crucial events. This action ties them together with a third mother, Carole. A seductive barmaid with a bad temper, an overactive libido, and a young son, Carole is short in the nurture department as well. Her live-in boyfriend, Francois, provides the only steadiness her son, Jose, enjoys. Carole's old flame, Alex, who might be Jose's father, is much like Joseph's father Edouard. Both are looking for a meal ticket and are too slick for their own good.

With enough twists and turns to satisfy any appetite for suspense, director Claude Miller translates this complex tale of how relationships and assumptions govern behavior and mixes it into an exciting froth of a film that builds to a satisfying climax. Conjecture, speculation, and prejudice intersect to direct the chance circumstances of birth. Airports and trains, arrivals and departures, are used repeatedly to signal the ever changing and multi-layered psychological landscape that lies beneath.

A gritty urban realism distinguishes this from a couple of other recent films from France with similar themes, including Claude Chabrol's Merci pour le Chocolat and a new film, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, starring Audrey Tautou as a psychotic waif. In Miller's film, class differences are significant, especially for those in the lower echelon. If a bit heavy handed with some unlikely timing and a tidy ending, it is a film that lingers in the mind and haunts with some larger questions beyond the confines of the film.

Sandrine Kiberlain: Betty Fisher
Nicole Garcia: Margot Fisher
Directed by Claude Miller	101 Minutes