In 1998's Cousin Bette, Jessica Lange Plays a Bitter Spinster Out For Revenge
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Jessica Lange has reined as a grand dame of American film, television and theater for so long that it can be easy to forget just how lustily her starring debut in 1976’s King Kong was pilloried by critics.
From the very beginning Lange had extraordinary presence. In a realm populated by the world’s most beautiful and glamorous women Lange stood out for being particularly gorgeous and glamorous.
That did not seem to matter to pudding-headed critics apoplectic that Lange portrayed a ditsy looker as a bit of a kook. Lange played the role exactly as it was meant to be played but that didn’t keep critics from confusing her with her character.
Lange took some time off to work on her craft after the critical beatdown she received over King Kong. At the time it was uncertain as to whether or not Lange would even continue acting or whether she’d return to modeling.
No one could have imagined just how impressive Lange’s acting career would prove to be. She didn’t just win an Academy Award; she won TWO Academy Awards. Lange picked up the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Tootsie. Twelve years later she scored a Best Actress win for 1994’s Blue Sky, a movie I’m not sure Lange even remembers she made and, again, she won the most prestigious award in acting for it.
How impressive is Lange’s career? She’s won the Triple Crown of acting, in that she’s scored two Oscars, three Emmys AND a Tony. She’s just a Grammy Award away from EGOT status.
That’s not bad for someone laughed offscreen in her first big role even as it’s not quite as impressive as one of Lange’s main rivals for the ingenue role in King Kong: Meryl Streep.
Lange’s timeless beauty lends an ironic quality to her title character's predicament in the 1998 adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s 1846 novel Cousin Bette. Bette comes from a family of limited means that decided to give of all its resources to her cousin Adeline (Geraldine Chaplin) on the basis that Adeline was more attractive and consequently had a better chance of getting married and consequently succeeding in a society that, like all societies, prioritizes youth and beauty above all else.
Bette was relegated to life as a spinster of modest means overflowing with richly merited anger and bitterness towards a family that doesn’t even try to hide their preference for Adeline over her cousin.
When Adeline dies Bette hopes that she’ll finally have an opportunity to enjoy the life of privilege and comfort that was robbed from her long ago. She underestimates the cruelty and pettiness of a family she clearly and deservedly despises, however.
Instead of rewarding Bette for her long decades of selfless sacrifice they instead offer her a position as an unpaid housekeeper for Hortense (Kelly MacDonald) and Baron Hulot (Hugh Laurie), Adeline’s widower and a man who frittered away a fortune pursuing beautiful women other than his wife.
Bette’s one joy in life is her complicated relationship with Count Wenceslas Steinbach (Aiden Young), a much younger, talented sculptor she gives money, guidance and support but at a steep cost both emotionally and financially.
When Bette makes the mistake of mentioning her relationship with the tortured artist to Hortense, the younger woman sets about finding and then seducing the vulnerable opportunist and then marrying him in order to secure a lucrative commission.
Bette has taken all that she can take. Over the course of a long, unhappy life she has given and given and given to her family without receiving anything in return other than condescending wisecracks and veiled insults.
The woman of a certain age snaps and decides to enact revenge on her awful family. To help her in her mission of righteous vengeance Bette recruits the services of Jenny Cadine (Elisabeth Shue), a burlesque performer, courtesan and Baron Hulot’s mistress.
The fetching young sexpot will be the luscious instrument of Bette’s cold-blooded revenge. The scheming spinster with a heart full of hate and a mind full of devious schemes decides to use Jenny’s ripe, irresistible sexuality to destroy the lives of the people who have ruined her.
Without Bette to bully and cajole him into greatness Wenceslas becomes lazy and indolent and fails to complete the sculpture he was commissioned to produce. This puts the family in such a hole that Hortense is reduced to accepting Cesar Crevel’s (Bob Hoskins) crude yet sincere offer to pay her handsomely for sexual services.
Crevel has leering eyes for more than just Hortense. He's Baron Hulot’s primary competition for Jenny as well. Jenny, meanwhile, begins a sexual relationship with Wencheles that comes to a head when she arranges for both Hortense and Count Hulot to see her having passionate sex with Wenceles.
This destroys Hortense and Count Hulot. Count Hulot is so shocked that he suffers from a debilitating stroke while Hortense is so enraged that she fatally shoots and kills her husband while aiming at his mistress.
Bette succeeds in destroying a family that had only ever made her miserable but it proves an empty victory. She is left alone with Hortense and Wenceles’ orphaned baby, who she projects all of her hopes and dreams onto the same way she did his father. She’s not a hero by any means; she’s just less terrible than the people around her. She’s an anti-hero if not a complicated villain.
Cousin Bette is a nicely nasty dark comedy of manners about a woman who has been fucked over her entire life and finally can’t take it anymore and the sexy pragmatist who helps her realize her misanthropic ambitions.
It’s distinguished by fine performances from a terrific cast. Laurie is hilarious in his sad-eyed helplessness. He is a uniquely worthless human being who lives only for sin and vice and suffers accordingly. Hoskins is a hoot as a crude galoot who will stop at nothing to realize his sordid aims and Shue is a firecracker of raw sexuality as a woman who has seemingly every straight man in France wrapped around her finger.
But the film belongs to Lange, who can do more with a withering glare or pointed bit of sarcasm than lesser actors can do with whole screenplays. I was amused and engaged by Cousin Bette. It plays like a lighter, more class-based version of Dangerous Liaisons. Like Lange’s character, it’s unmistakably cold and distant but that is entirely by design.
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