Stephen Schiff

“… [T]he only thing I didn't get too much of -- didn't get enough of, rally -- was Jessica Lange. Lange has suffered her share of razzing over the years: she had the Faye Wray role in 1976's spoofy remake of King Kong (frankly, I thought she was the best thing in it), and then the thankless role of lusty Lady Death in All That Jazz. In Postman, she exudes a spacy, dangerous intelligence that reminds me of Tuesday Weld, and like Weld, she has a horsy, toothy, expressive mouth that can seduce someone one minute and hiss at him the next (whenever she kisses Jack Nicholson, you wait to see whether the kiss will turn into a bite.) Lange's sultriness is tremulous and a little scary; in her, violence and sensuality mingle with an eerie ease. She may carry herself with a model's casual grace -- her head erect, so that one can see the perfect line of her jaw -- but you sense a tension running through her like a live wire. In one scene, she threatens Nicholson, and the corners of her mouth begin twitching the way Humphrey Bogart's used to do--except that Lange's tic is fast and spasmodic and unplanned, as if a jagged energy were pouring out of her unbidden. Watching Lange's performance, one realizes that Cora is smarter and more complex than Frank, and nobler, too--that it is she who turns him into a monster and she who can save his soul. Jessica Lange is one of the few actresses around who can play virgin and whore at the same time; Postman makes me think she can play everything in between as well.”

Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix, March 24, 1981