Cousin Bette

Released 1998
Stars Jessica Lange, Elisabeth Shue, Bob Hoskins, Hugh Laurie, Kelly MacDonald, Aden Young, Geraldine Chaplin
Directed by Des McAnuff

Characters motivated by money are always more interesting than characters motivated by love, because you don't know what they'll do next. The Victorians knew how important money was. The plots of Dickens and Trollope wallowed in it, and Henry James created exquisite punishments for his naively romantic Americans, caught in the nets of needy Europeans. And now consider "Cousin Bette," a film based on one of Balzac's best-known novels, in which France of the mid-19th century is unable to supply a single person who is not motivated more or less exclusively by greed.

The title character, played by Jessica Lange with the gravity of a governess in Victorian pornography, is a spinster of about 40. Her life was sacrificed, she believes, because her family had sufficient resources to dress, groom and train only one of their girls--her cousin Adelaide. Bette was sent to work in the garden, and the lucky cousin, on her death bed, nostalgically recalls the dirt under Bette's nails. When the cousin dies, Bette fully expects to marry the widower, Baron Hulot (Hugh Laurie). But the baron offers her only a housekeeper's position.

Refusing the humiliating post, Bette returns to her shabby hotel. Bette is not a woman it is safe to offend. She works as a seamstress in a bawdy theater, where the star is the baron's mistress, Jenny Cadine (Elisabeth Shue). Bette knows exactly how Jenny works, and uses her access as a useful weapon ("You will be the ax--and I will be the hand that wields you!"). The movie is not respectful like a literary adaptation, but wicked with gossip and social satire. ("The 19th century as we know it was invented by Balzac," Oscar Wilde said.)

Summary by Roger Ebert