Nearly all of Balzac's novels dramatize Karl Marx's observation in the
Communist Manifesto that "The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its
sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money
relation." Des McAnuff's film "Cousin Bette," based on Balzac's novel of
the same name, is faithful to both Balzac and Marx on this score.
This is no bland and pretty costume drama in the Merchant-Ivory mold. The
aristocrats and the haut-bourgeoisie are repellent gargoyles in McAnuff's
film, just as they are in Balzac. The film is a gritty, radical satire of
bourgeois mores that constantly reminds us of the price-tag attached to all
human relations. McAnuff explains what drew him to the Balzac novel:
"When it comes to choosing a project, I look for something that illuminates
my life and times. 'Cousin Bette' began to feel more and more like a story
about a large American city, where we have perhaps some of the same social
and political problems that Paris faced in the nineteenth century...Paris
was in a depression in the 1840s and no one in fact saw the turmoil coming.
Having gone through the riots in Los Angeles, it began to feel remarkably
similar. When I saw this link to current times, that's when I really
climbed aboard and started to shape the story."
Cousin Bette (Jessica Lange) is a forty year old seamstress who works
backstage in a music hall. Her sister has just passed away and she hopes to
snag the wealthy grieving husband Hector Hulot (Hugh Laurie). When he meets
with her, he certainly seems to have this intention since he speaks about
the vacuum in his life and the need for someone to look after his
college-age daughter. To her disappointment, she discovers that he is
merely offering her a job as a housekeeper. This blow to her self-esteem
ratchets up her resentment against the world one more notch. While she is
the protagonist of the film, one can feel no sympathy toward her or any of
the other characters for that matter. The key to the success of the film
and the novel it is based on is that caters to our morbid curiosity. The
cast of players, who are all essentially corrupt and money-hungry,
fascinate us like a bunch of scorpions under glass.
We are introduced to Hulot's daughter Hortense (Kelly MacDonald) as she is
being propositioned by the superrich Crevel (Bob Hoskins), who offers her
200,000 francs to look at her naked body. She turns him down.
Another central character is the young, handsome fallen aristocrat
Wenceslas (Aden Young) who lives in poverty in the same rundown tenement as
Cousin Bette. He is trying rather unsuccessfully to launch a career as a
sculptor. At night he tiptoes into her apartment in order to steal cheese
from her rat-trap and sneak a drink of wine from the bottle she keeps on a
shelf. He is not aware that she has been awake when he makes these
nocturnal visits and, moreover, has fallen in love with him.
One day Cousin Bette discovers Wenceslas unconscious in his flat, where he
has tried to kill himself by filling the room with fumes from his
coal-stove. She throws open the window and revives him. Then she offers to
subsidize his career, albeit in a modest fashion. She will pay for his rent
and his meals, but emphasizes that she will keep a strict account of all
sums advanced. Like Crevel, she is consumed with love but knows that
everything has a cash value as well.
The singer-dancer Jenny Cadine (Elisabeth Shue) rounds out the cast of
miscreants. In her spare time, she is courtesan to Hulot. We meet her
onstage as she is complaining that her costume does not show off her best
features. Cousin Bette, her seamstress, approaches her from behind and cuts
a large patch in the fabric covering her backside. She then announces that
everybody can now see the star performer's best feature. Jenny looks at her
naked ass and likes what she sees. From that night on, she performs
bare-assed.
After Wenceslas has become Cousin Bette's prot�g�, the young Hortense
decides to steal him away. After Bette discovers that the two have become
lovers, she confronts him in his studio. What about us, she asks. He tells
her that he will always love her as the mother in his life. This rejection
inspires her to take revenge against all who have caused her misery and
disappointment. Like Iago, she conspires behind the scenes to set one
character against another until they are all ruined. In contradistinction
to Othello, the major character in Balzac's tale is the villain, not the
hero. Since Balzac's cynical world-view excludes heroism, this has an
air-tight logic. Furthermore, in some sense, villains are more interesting.
Milton's Lucifer is one of the great characters in literature. We remember
him, not any of the angels.
One of the greatest achievements of the film is the casting and the way
McAnuff directs his cast. You lose track of the associations you have with
the various actors in previous films and only know them as the Balzac
characters. Jessica Lange is perfect as the dark and vengeful Bette. Hugh
Laurie, best known for his Bertie Wooster on the PBS series, brings the
vain spendthrift aristocrat Hulot to life. Hoskins has often played
vulgarians, so his perfection as Crevel comes as no surprise. What is a
surprise, however, is Elisabeth Shue's Jenny Cadine. Shue is best known for
her role as another prostitute in "Leaving Las Vegas." What she brings to
the role of Jenny is a keen sense of the class antagonism between her and
Hulot, who pays for her love. When he--or any other of her wealthy
clients--can no longer pay for her services, she instantly turns cold and
haughty. As such, she is the perfect illustration of Marx's dictum that
capitalism has left no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous "cash payment." By implication, the same thing
is true of man and woman.
What makes "Cousin Bette" exceptional cinema is the modernist aesthetic
vision of director Des McAnuff, who never worked in film before. He is a
two-time Tony Award-winner ("Tommy," "Big River") who understood completely
how to bring Balzac alive. He has entirely rejected the temptation to
romanticize 19th century France. Thus, certain directorial decisions make
perfect sense, among them the decision to use cinematographer Andrzej
Sekula, who worked previously on "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs."
Instead of the languid camera work of an Ivory-Merchant film that dotes
self-consciously on wallpaper or petticoats, we get a hard-edged vision of
the underbelly of French society.
McAnuff was clear about the look he expected from Sekula:
"This film is about outsiders and insiders, about contrasts...Visually, it
was a question of finding a chateau for the Hulots that was spacious and
had that fading first Empire look, reflecting the end of an age of
abundance and plenty. Then, we wanted to contrast that with Bette's
neighborhood, a medieval city that was suffering from the diseases of the
early industrial revolution...We wanted to avoid romanticizing the
suffering of the people...We wanted cobblestone streets, very narrow lanes,
a sense of claustrophobia, almost a rat's maze, full of smoke, coal dust
and dung, alongside spectacular eighteenth century architecture."
In other words, he wanted to convey sharp class distinctions.
The film concludes with fighting in the streets as the revolution of 1848
erupts. The decadence of aristocrats and haut-bourgeoisie like Hulot,
Wenceslas and Crevel has finally brought the masses into the streets. The
most resolute section of the masses was the proletariat, of whom Marx wrote
the following in "Class Struggles in France 1848-1850":
"It is well known how the workers, with unexampled bravery and ingenuity,
without leaders, without a common plan, without means and, for the most
part, lacking weapons, held in check for five days the army, the Mobile
Guard, the Paris National Guard, and the National Guard that streamed in
from the provinces. It is well known how the bourgeoisie compensated itself
for the mortal anguish it suffered by unheard -- of brutality, massacring
over 3000 prisoners. The official representatives of French democracy were
steeped in republican ideology to such an extent that it was only some
weeks later that they began to have an inkling of the significance of the
June fight. They were stupefied by the gunpowder smoke in which their
fantastic republic dissolved."
Balzac hated the bourgeoisie and workers equally. Only as the industrial
working-class became better organized politically and more self-confident,
did novelists such as Zola begin to champion its cause. Balzac's importance
is that he wrote brilliantly about the social decay that capitalism breeds.
Thus, he is a novelist who remains very contempory. As such, McAnuff's
bitter, dark comedy "Cousin Bette" does Balzac perfect justice.
(After much soul-searching, I have decided to crosspost to the Marxism list
and PEN-L on items such as these in the future. Since LBO is a
cross-section of Marxism and PEN-L participants, I will probably have less
duplications this way by ignoring it. For those of you like Mark Jones who
receive duplicate posts, I humbly apologize. When I get to London, I will
buy you and your lovely wife dinner at the finest restaurants. I might even
bring a kitten or two back to New York.)
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
