One of the outstanding things about the life of Elisabeth (age 10), aka "Betty" in "Je m'appelle Elisabeth" (International Title: "Call Me Elizabeth") is the vast amount of time she has to go for long, solitary bike rides, discover and investigate the ruins of an old house, and tell herself stories at night under the covers. The story is set in 1960 in the French countryside, and there's no TV, videogames, play dates or cell phones to intrude on her daily routines. In the morning Betty makes her own toast and gets coffee for her dad (Stephane Freiss), then packs her bookbag and bicycles off to school.
In the evenings she has dinner with her parents or the housemaid Rose (Yolande Moreau) and spends the hours before bed roaming the corridors of her huge, silent house, creaky with age and full of mysterious dark corners.
A modern-day child would probably scream with boredom in the first 10 minutes of Betty's day, but between director Jean-Pierre Ameris and screenwriter Guillaume Laurant (of "Amelie" fame), they show the rich density of Betty's inner life in the fantasies and stories she invents to fuel her imagination and boost her morale when she has a bad day at school. In many ways, Betty is a sad child. Her mom (Maria de Medeiros) is having an affair and is rarely home in the afternoons; her dad is the director of a mental institution situated right next door and is often stressed; and her older sister and sole comrade, Agnes (Lauriane Sire), has gone to boarding school. Rose is one of her father's patients and suffers from amnesia triggered by an extreme trauma. Betty seemingly takes all this in stride, but at night her anxieties rise up ghostlike, to give her nightmares.
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