Cousin Bette

Jessica Lange schemes and manipulates like Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons in this wicked comedy of bad manners based on the book by Honore de Balzac. As Cousin Bette's (Lange) hated cousin Adeline (Geraldine Chaplin) lays dying, she compels spinster Bette to promise to take care of her family: and Bette happily obliges, though not in the way Adeline probably intended. Bette's lifelong grudge against the Hulot family is exacerbated when Adeline's husband offers Bette not a proposal of marriage as expected, but the position of housekeeper. Unluckily for him she works as seamstress to his mistress, Jenny, an infamous 19th century diva (Elisabeth Shue, embarrassingly out of her league) of the burlesque stage. "You will be the ax, and I the hand that wields you," Bette diabolically states. There is little suspense in whether Bette will deliver the Hulot's comeuppance, but there is wicked fun in watching her various machinations unfold. Recommended. (K. Lee Benson)