Breaking The Mold: ‘Nurse Betty’ Is A Snow Day In Georgia

Nurse Betty doesn’t quite fit. In movie year 2000, which thus far has given us few standout films, and even fewer quality movies that push the cinematic form either narratively or visually, director Neil LaBute’s latest seems to stick out like a snow day in Georgia.  Subsequently, Nurse Betty is a bit hobbled by this feeling of displacement. Perhaps it may have been better received if it was released among the company of such offerings as Being John Malkovich, The Blair Witch Project, Three Kings, Magnolia, and others from 1999.  Nevertheless, Nurse Betty, now playing at Bethel Cinema, is an intriguing, at times shocking, yet almost always entertaining, film with a central performance that cries out, “Oscar worthy!”

Cute-as-a-button Renee Zellweger, so winning in her first breakout role in Jerry Maguire, is an absolute standout as Betty, a sweet Kansas waitress who is unfortunately married to a lout of a husband, a conniving, philandering car salesman (Aaron Eckhart). To help cope with her life with her sub-par spouse, Betty immerses herself in the fantasy of her beloved daytime soap opera, “A Reason to Love,” about a widowed wiz of a surgeon, Dr David Ravell (Greg Kinnear). When Betty’s husband is visited by two mysterious strangers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) from out of town, Betty witnesses a horrific incident (Note: be forewarned, this is a staggeringly graphic, cringe-inducing sequence) that sends her spiraling into shock and into believing that the fictional world of her favorite TV program is reality, and thus she sets off on an unbelievable trek to find her long-last ex-fiancé, a surgeon at Loma Vista Hospital named David Ravell.

Meanwhile, the two out-of-towners — the older and wiser veteran Charlie (Freeman) and young-gun Wesley (Rock) — discover there is a witness to their actions, and, upon hearing that Betty has fled her Kansas home, believe her to be on the run and fully aware, not only of their crime, but of the dark (initially unspecified) dealings of her husband. Thus, the duo sets out to do one last job: find Betty, track down their goods, and cover all their tracks.

Nurse Betty works in a lot of shades in its 112 minutes, with its primary tone being one of whimsy, as spearheaded by the head-in-the-clouds wanderings and misadventures of Betty. Completely unaware of any demarcations between fantasy and reality, Betty wanders across state lines in search of her beloved David, and her journey eventually lands her in a hospital job in California (thus Nurse Betty) and once in La-La Land she actually comes face-to-face with David Ravell... or rather, the actor who plays him (Kinnear), not that it matters in Betty’s warped state of mind.

Although the film’s central tone is one of whimsy (which is also taken on by Freeman’s character, who begins to fantasize about the woman he believes Betty to be), it also is one of satire, particularly of the show-biz world in general and the soap-opera genre specifically.  Kinnear is especially adept at conveying this shallow, “I’m the center of the world,” mentality, and LaBute has some fun with these aspects of the movie. Yet, cannily, LaBute also keeps an edge to picture, as characterized by the graphic scene at Betty’s home and the bang-bang finish to the film. While some of his more graphic scenes seem a bit overdone, they do serve a purpose: it’s as if LaBute wants us to be sure there is an ugly reality which is forcing these characters to want to retreat into a fantasy world. Their delusions are not borne of madness, but simple escapism.

Nurse Betty is rated R. The language, though not as rough as say Tarantino or Scorsese, is plenty raw enough to earn its rating, to say nothing of the graphic violence that punctuates the film’s beginning and climactic sequences.  This is not a perfect film, but it is an ambitious, entertaining one that is marked by a talented cast performing at a high level, particularly the aforementioned Zellweger. It’s still early yet to be talking about Academy Awards, but her performance here should at least net her a nomination for Best Actress.