Betty Sizemore (Rene Zellweger), a small
town waitress from Kansas, is addicted to the soap opera A Reason to Love, and
especially to its star Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear). Her unfaithful, truculent husband,
Del (Aaron Eckhart), buys a car for his used car lot that has an expensive load of drugs
in the trunk. Two professional hit men, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock)
come looking for it. They question Del about the drugs, but he doesn’t seem to know
about them. Betty opens the door just in time to secretly watch as Del is brutally
murdered by the two, resulting in a dissociative fugue*. The fugue causes her to forget
the murder and take off for Los Angeles in her new identity as Nurse Betty, the ex-fiancé
of Dr. Ravell. Unfortunately, the car she takes is the one loaded with the drugs.
In a way, Nurse Betty is two separate movies at the same time. First, it is a
tearjerker melodrama about an obsessed girl (Betty) who pursues the object of her fantasy
in a pathologically single-minded way. It is also a western about an obsessed quasi-cowboy
(Charlie) who pursues the object of his fantasy in a pathologically single-minded way. To
make sure no one misses the juxtaposition, we see both the girl and the cowboy have an
imaginary dance with their idée fixe at the rim of the Grand Canyon. There is, however,
one glaring plot problem. We see what causes Betty’s descent into a fugue state, even
though the dissociative event is not portrayed very effectively on film, but there is
never a demonstrated motivation for Charlie’s descent. Make no mistake. These fugue
states really do happen, and more often than most folks would imagine. What causes
Charlie’s?
Zellweger (Jerry Maguire, Bridget Jones’s Diary) is superb. She has a Doris
Day type of cute spunkiness matched with granitic strength of purpose. LaBute (In the
Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) gives us close-ups of her that are some of
the most adoring I’ve seen since Hitchcock was besotted with Grace Kelly’s face.
Freeman, who now has 58 movies under his belt, seems incapable of anything less than
flawlessness. And though his character doesn’t last long, Aaron Eckhart (In the
Company of Men, Erin Brokovich) plays a guy you’ll love to hate, as he cheats on
his wife, wipes his dirty hands on the curtains, and even eats his wife’s birthday
cupcake. All other parts are handled beautifully, which is a sign of praiseworthy
directing. The music by Rolf Kent is touching and perfectly placed.
Nurse Betty has a frequent skewing of the color palette towards blue and green.
The film’s cinematographer, Jean-Yves Escoffier, claims that this was intentional and
done through the use of lights, not filters. I won’t argue with the art, but the
presentation is distracting. I didn’t detect any off-putting DVD abnormalities. Both
sound and picture are at the high end of the norm we see in modern DVDs. The extras are
superb; a model for what should be available. LaBute, Freeman, Rock, Kinnear and Zellweger
provide the best director and cast commentary I’ve ever heard. It is funny and full
of great insights. In addition, Nurse Betty has a second commentary track with
LaBute and the producers, composer and cinematographer. The DVD-ROM portion includes the
complete shooting script. I personally don’t mind that there’s no "making
of" documentary because most are just an extended commercial. All in all, this is one
to buy.
