Cousin Bette (1998)

The closing credits on this movie rolled more than an hour ago. I still feel soiled.The only good thing about director Des McAnuff's version of Cousin Bette is Jessica Lange's excellent turn as Bette, that misunderstood, underestimated old maid hiding her lifelong rage and jealousy beneath a mask of family loyalty.In all other respects, this adaptation is execrable. Screenwriters Lynn Siefert and Susan Tarr should be banned from ever penning any more literary adaptations.Balzac's Cousin Bette was a masterpiece, an eternal condemnation of the selfishness of vice, achieved through a portrayal of depravity's destruction of virtue. The cinematic version is a mediocre daytime drama in petticoats.The power of the original novel derives from Balzac's use of fascinatingly, unforgettably, tragically human characters to illuminate his pitiless moral: that virtue, nine times out of ten, will fall to the knife in the back of vice. That moral is played out through the characters. And from the pure, pious, and eternally forgiving Adeline Hulot, a wife willing to forgive and forget more than two decades of her adored husband's infidelity, all the way down to the Jewish courtesan Josepha, at once a shameless gold-digger, a great artist, and, at heart, a kind woman, every player in Balzac's grand tragedy plays an irreplaceable part and illuminates an unalterable truth. And it is with the writers' treatment of those characters that McAnuff's Cousin Bette first fails.The greatest tragedy of the novel lies in the gradual abandonment and destruction of the saintly Adeline Hulot. After closing her eyes to two decades of infidelity, she slowly falls from her position into terrible poverty and neglect--one of those illuminations of the destruction of virtue by vice which gives the novel its power. Siefert and Tarr seem not to have grasped this essential point of the source material. Instead of having to deal with the difficulty of a great beauty thrown into the gutter, they have taken the easy way out by killing her off within the first five minutes of the novel. And this without even bothering to pay lip service to the beauty and charm of the woman whose success is the fuel for the fire of Bette's vengefulness. Without Adeline's presence and influence, Bette's envy is pointless. But what else could one expect from screenwriters this illiterate?Next, Siefert and Tarr erased the most fascinating character of the original novel, that of Valerie Marneffe, the middle-class civil servant's wife who is the cause of all of the novel's misfortunes. Valerie was a far more fascinating character than her cinematic replacement, the actress and whore Jenny Cadine. Madame Marneffe's hypocrisy--the truth of her whore's heart disguised by the outward appearance of a virtuous wife--and the complications of her avarice and passion, provided a large part of the entertainment and insight of the novel. Again, Siefert and Tarr have avoided the difficulty of bringing such a multifaceted character to life, simply by cutting her out altogether. Jenny Cadine seems to live for nothing more than a few bouquets of flowers and a pretty dress or two. Not a fraction as compelling.So the characters do not live up to the source material. Neither does the plot, which turns Balzac's masterfully arranged actions and reactions topsy-turvy. Here and there, one may see bits of the original novel struggling to break through--as in Bette's rage when she is told that Wenceslas Steinbock, whom she adores, has secretly entered into a romance with her niece Hortense--but those glimpses are more tragic than anything else, for exposing the greatness that this movie fails miserably to approach.With a series of seemingly natural and inevitable turns of fortune and struggles to escape ruin, Balzac presented a wholly organic portrait of absolute devastation. Siefert and Tarr hope merely to titillate viewers with an exposed female buttock or breast here and there, some pretty costumes and settings, and a few melodramatic situations forced and laughable. Balzac needed no duels to depict rivalry and hatred; he needed no accidental husband-shootings to bring the full force of marital discord home; he needed no sudden descents into madness to prove the ruinousness of deluded obsession. No one hurled dishes to shatter against walls in the novel. No wives were arrested, no sons had to escape from money-lenders promising to "kill your wife and your child" when debts were not paid. Those soap-opera devices weren't necessary in the original novel, because the story itself far surpassed them. But Siefert and Tarr need them merely to dress up an utter narrative failure.Cousin Bette, the movie, may indeed appeal to some viewers, those who ask for nothing but sub-The Young and the Restless melodrama dressed up in period costumes. For those of us hoping for a bit more than that--perhaps simply a semi-faithful adaptation of one of the greatest works of the Western canon--it is simply best to stay away. I certainly should have.

Jessica Lange is just fabulous in this movie. I had to watch it a couple of times to see where Elizabeth Shue fits in. The music was very enjoyable. I thought the movie was very well made, and enjoyed the little cameos of the musical director.

A great film, with wonderful performances from all, especially Lange, who plays her role so delicately that the viewer is never able to get the sort of hold on Bette that would do injustice to the novel. The most remarkable thing about this film however is Elisabeth Shue's singing which is... odd. But this is all in all a brilliant film with a depth of character and strength of plot (the ending leaves one empty for days) that makes it highly rewarding.

Jessica Lange, should not, and will not become another Bette Davis, but throughout the film we see the subtle curl of the lip, the side long glance, the stiff nod of the head that Davis made famous.A story told with great style that kept my rapt attention. Sorry, at the end of the film I couldn't help but flash on the end of Rosemary's Baby!!! Anyone else?