In Des McAnuff's brassy film version of Honore de Balzac's 1846 novel, McAnuff and screenwriters Lynn Siefert and Susan Tarr have simplified Balzac's plot, eliminating and combining characters, and decaffeinating the social satire of La Comedie Humaine, transforming Balzac's drollery into a tale of self-justification and revenge -- a Death Wish for the Masterpiece Theatre crowd.
Lange's Bette walks through the Hulot household like a stiff-lipped functionary prepared to count the bodies. There aren't any yet. But Bette doesn't plan on taking any prisoners.
She agrees to become the housekeeper for the Hulots mostly because of a hidden love for Adeline's husband Hector. Hector Hulot (a young, pre-House Hugh Laurie), a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, is an irresponsible reprobate, squandering the family funds on fancy dinners and on his sexy music hall mistress, Jenny (Elisabeth Shue, the film's one actor that seems to understand Balzac). Hector's daughter Hortense (Kelly Macdonald) is no better. Bette arrives in the Hulot household already ill tempered at the family's cretinous treatment of her (Hector asks Bette to console Hortense on an ill-advised love affair by saying, 'Talk to her. You've lived all these years without love. It hasn't made you unhappy'). But Bette's suppressed rage really kicks into gear when she discovers that a penniless sculptor, Wenceslas (Aden Young), whom she has befriended and looks at with an amorous eye, has been having an affair with Hortense behind her back. After Hortense marries Wenceslas, Bette willingly moves into the Hulot home and, enlisting the support of Jenny, proceeds to systematically plot the destruction of the Hulots.
Cousin Bette is high energy Broadway director Des McAnuff's feature film debut, having previously helmed such smash hits as Big River, Tommy, and the Matthew Broderick revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. McAnuff brings a Broadway musical's brashness to this Balzac adaptation. As a clue to how successful he is in twisting and turning Balzac into a degraded amalgam, he has only made one other film since -- the head banger slapstick excrescence The Adventures of Ricky and Bullwinkle.
Where Balzac would enlist description and dialogue to implicate his characters into a bourgeoisie end game, McAnuff turns the carefully turned plot into a series of quick blackout sketches. It is bare bones Balzac, turning his dry satire into farcical burlesque, muting the meaning of the author's prose.
McAnuff's sensibility wends its way into the presentation of Balzac's characters, which are directed as if they are second bananas in a comedy revue. In their cardboard depictions, there is very little surprise or concern as to what happens to any of them.
And then there is Lange. Cousin Bette is an old maid bent on retribution par excellence and the one character to bind together all the plot lines and lend a tincture of social satire to the proceedings. With her hair pulled back in a death mask bun like a latter day Judith Anderson, her mouth a stark and severe line, and her eyes searing into the souls of the Hulots, Lange's Cousin Bette has not one ounce of irony in her body. With her crisp and curt line-readings, Lange slams the lid down on this misconceived effort for good. As my editor Christopher Null once remarked of Lange's performance, 'Jessica Lange here is about as comedic as leukemia.'
We're off to see the comedy!
