The plot of Alias Betty (2001) is a bit too good for most screenwriters to have concocted, but not too good for the novelist Ruth Rendell, on whose novel–The Tree of Hands–it is based.  A French film by Claude Miller, it concerns a mentally unbalanced woman who kidnaps a little boy in order to make a gift of him to her grieving, now childless grown daughter.  What we have here is a person whose suffering drives her to become comfortable with an immoral situation.   Several story strands are juggled perfectly; the novel is adroitly adapted.  Nothing wrong with the acting either.

(In French with English subtitles)

Cover of "Alias Betty"

Cover of Alias Betty