ALIAS BETTY (2003)

This French language adaptation of a particularly nasty & clever Ruth Rendell novel, stocked with characters as compelling selfish & loathsome as any in Patricia Highsmith, is crafted in such a naturalistic style that you never quite buy into the narrative tricks and coincidences that make it work so effectively on the page. A brief, terrifying prologue sets up the crazy mom/isolated daughter relationship and the story picks up decades later when Mom, still unstable and almost bizarrely self-centered, snatches a child off the street to replace the boy her daughter has just lost. Like a pebble dropped in still waters, the ripples touch everyone with a thread to either the boy or the grieving mother. Further actions only complicate the pattern as the stakes rise to deadly levels. Cold-blooded is the word.