Betty Blue

“Betty’’ may have been misunderstood, though, or at least misrepresented. A three-hour director’s cut titled “Betty Blue: Version Integrale’’ was created by Beineix back in the 1990s and is available on DVD; it turns up today for a weeklong run on the Kendall’s big screen, where the film’s achingly lovely afterglow visuals belong. Is it a better movie? Possibly. It’s certainly a more personal one.

And sex realistically portrayed in mainstream narrative film is no longer the shock it was 23 years ago. Audiences may find it easier to accept the easygoing carnal bliss of young lovers Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Béatrice Dalle) as a privileged state - Eden before the fall. Where the original release focused on Betty’s body to the point of exploitation, the director’s cut provides balance by giving Anglade’s nudity equal time. These are people who are supremely comfortable in their skins; at times you feel as though you’re watching beautiful animals at play.

“Betty Blue’’ isn’t about sex, of course, but about passion and love - about how they change everything while saving nobody. The film begins a week after Zorg and Betty have met and follows them through a footloose year or so, from beachside bungalows to apartments in Paris and Marseilles to a small town in southeastern France. The story allows for other people - Gérard Darmon and Consuelo De Haviland are charming as the couple’s closest friends - but essentially it watches Zorg watching Betty.

It’s impossible not to watch her. Dalle, who’s astonishing, turns the character into a gap-toothed force of nature - a sensualist battered by demons. Betty has fits that lead to sudden bursts of violence, and the film keeps edging her toward a cliff that Zorg and she and we know is there. The most moving shot in the whole film may be the helpless look on Betty’s face just before she plunges her fist through a glass door.