Cousin Bette (1998)

Too much of everything

Absolutely the worst movie.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

And so it begins, the calculations in the mind of a "Wicked Lady". This is the type of delicious melodrama (often with comic overtones) that Gainsborough was known for in the mid 1940's, usually starring the gorgeous Margaret Lockwood. But Jessica Lange's Cousin Bette is not a ravishing beauty; in fact, she's quite unlovely. Lack of makeup (or pale powder) turns the usually gorgeous Lange into quite the plain spinster, devoted to the dying day of her older cousin, Geraldine Chaplin. She seemed to believe that her devotion would make her wealthy widowed cousin in law Hugh Laurie wish to marry her so she could take over the running of the household. Well, housekeepers do run the house through their master's orders, so in a sense, she got her wish. As surrogate mother to Laurie's children, she becomes a confidante as most servants do, and it's instantly fascinating to watch the wheels turn in Lange's severely coiffed head. What could have been a complex melodrama of a woman's vengeance turns out to be a convoluted reversal of fortune version of "Dangerous Liaisons" where a poor relative of the Mobility plays sexual mind games with the young, vowing vengeance on the second cousin who marries the much younger man she tried to control after saving his life. Much of the cast seem far too American in style and mood to be believable as Napoleon era French. Elisabeth Shue, in particularly miscast both in the age of her character and her believability in the setting. The musical sequences, too, obviously influenced by the success of "Amadeus", are seemingly modern musical theater style rather than the proper baroque feeling. Of course costumes and sets are lush, but that doesn't take away from the falseness of the film overall.

This movie is alright if you've got the remote in your hand in order to speed up the many painfully slow shots of people walking. (Perhaps I could have appreciated the photography more if the music wasn't so overbearing throughout).I really like Elisabeth Shue, but her lines were especially unnatural sounding. You can't make Jessica Lange look plain - it's not possible. But, kudos for trying.Most of the acting was actually fine, but the story line and some of the editing choices kept this movie from ever achieving any real since of rhythm.

A somewhat sanitised version of the Balzac classic which departs disappointingly from the original story. Jessica Lang is far too pretty a version of the downtrodden, wizened old hag Bette of the original and so conveys none of her deviousness in the many schemes to avenge herself against her condescending relatives. Missing completely from the film is arch-whore Valerie, a central character of the book's plot, who dies a grim death from a disfiguring tropical disease at the conclusion, thus removing an important moral message of the tale. Most of Balzac's other works viz. Madame Bovary, contain one of these. That said, costumes and furniture are fairly faultless which shows Hollywood has at least tried to do justice to a great book.

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.