OVERLAY REPORT

In Jean-Jacques Beineix’s *Betty Blue* (37°2 le matin), the imagery of the eye serves as the ultimate symbol of the protagonist’s descent from "manic passion" into "irremediable madness." It represents the bridge between her hyper-sensitivity to the world and her eventual total rejection of reality. Here is the significance of the eye imagery, broken down by its thematic and narrative functions: ### 1. The Act of Self-Mutilation The most visceral and haunting use of eye imagery occurs late in the film. After Betty suffers a false pregnancy—a devastating blow to her hope of finding a "normal" anchor in the world—her mental health collapses. She gouges out her own eye. This act is significant because it marks the transition from **rebellion to self-destruction**. Throughout the film, Betty attacks the world around her (burning down the house, stabbing a client with a fork, throwing paint on cars). When she turns that violence on her own eye, she is symbolically attempting to "stop seeing" a world that she finds unbearable, ugly, and disappointing. ### 2. Vision vs. Perception Betty is depicted as someone who "sees" more than others. She is the only one who recognizes the genius in Zorg’s discarded manuscripts. Her "vision" is what drives the plot; she forces Zorg to move to Paris and submit his work because she perceives a reality for him that he is too lazy or humble to see for himself. However, this "vision" is a double-edged sword. To have that level of intensity means she cannot filter out the mundane or the painful. The eye imagery represents her **hyper-sensitivity**. By destroying her eye, she is effectively trying to shut off the sensory overload that has tortured her throughout the movie. ### 3. The "Gaze" and Objectification For much of the first half of the film, Betty is the object of the "male gaze." She is stunning, vibrant, and sexualized. The audience—and the characters around her—look at her with desire. When she mutilates her eye, she destroys her own beauty. She transforms herself from an object of desire into an object of horror. This is a radical act of autonomy; she reclaims her body from those who would merely "watch" her by making herself "unwatchable." ### 4. The Transition to the "Void" After the eye injury, Betty is hospitalized and becomes catatonic. The "eye" imagery shifts from a symbol of fire and passion to a symbol of a **void**. In the hospital scenes, her remaining eye is often fixed and vacant. The "light" that Zorg was so attracted to has gone out. The physical loss of the eye foreshadows her total psychological withdrawal. She is no longer "looking" at Zorg or the world; she has turned entirely inward. ### 5. Zorg’s Final Response The significance of the eye culminates in the film’s ending. When Zorg visits the hospital disguised as a woman to euthanize Betty, he is essentially performing the final "closing of the eyes." Because Betty has already blinded herself (literally and metaphorically), Zorg recognizes that the woman he loved—the one with the piercing, demanding vision—is already gone. His act of suffocation is a way to complete the process she started when she reached for her own eye: the total cessation of perception to end her suffering. ### Summary of Detail * **The Trigger:** The loss of the "vision" of motherhood (the negative pregnancy test). * **The Instrument:** She uses her own fingers/nails, making it a raw, personal assault. * **The Result:** A white bandage over half her face, which visually splits her character between the "beautiful Betty" of the past and the "broken Betty" of the present. * **The Symbolism:** The eye is the "window to the soul," and Betty’s soul was too large and volatile for the world she inhabited. Destruction of the eye was her only way to escape the "view."