Madame Bovary

The hardest part of cheating in the Victorian Era was removing all of your petticoats before you could screw.

Fortunately, the unfaithful wife in this drama has plenty of time thanks to her husband's schedule.

Married off to a small-town doctor Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes),adolescent Emma (Mia Wasikowska) is unsatisfied with her rural surroundings and her husband's absence.

These doldrums quickly culminate in excessive spending and extramarital affairs with two separate lovers (Logan Marshall-Green, Ezra Miller).

But when her affairs and increasing debt are exposed to her husband, Emma has no one but her past conquests to turn to for help.

An acceptable adaptation of the controversial classic, this abridged version doesn't sacrifice the novel's numerous themes, or dumbs them down. Instead it cuts through the unnecessary exposition to create a concise account of this complicated character.

Incidentally, Madame Bovary paved they way for future adulterers like Ashley Madison.

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Emma (Mia Wasikowska) leaves the convent to marry boring country doctor Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes). Life is dull. She flirts with awkward law clerk Léon Dupuis (Ezra Miller) and has an affair with the dashing Marquis d'Andervilliers (Logan Marshall-Green). She spends outrageously beyond her means and lecherous Monsieur Lheureux (Rhys Ifans) is too willing to give her credit. Monsieur Homais (Paul Giamatti) is the pharmacist friend.

Everybody speaks softly especially Mia. Her dull life is filmed in long scenes which only accentuates the dullness and infects the movie with its dullness. At least, the dullness is quite convincing. Mia needs to pierce that dullness with more powerful passionate acting but she is going for callous and wanting. She is still the heroine. It's all very subdue. I'm no literary person and maybe she is supposed to be this way. I can't comment on the accuracy of the depiction. It would be more compelling for her to embrace the darkness. It is beautiful in a moody sunset period piece way but it doesn't have the exuberance. It's kinda dull.

For the first 15 minutes of this latest film version of Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", I thought it was a misfire. But that slow start leads to a beautiful and affecting movie.

Anyone who knows Vincente Minnelli's version with Jennifer Jones will be surprised at how different this one feels.

Emma Bovary (Mia Wasikowska) goes from a convent school into a marriage arranged by her father. She marries novice doctor Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) who takes up a practice in a French provincial town. However Emma has a romantic imagination inspired by novels; she aspires to beautiful things and a life of elegance and style. She is encouraged in this by unscrupulous merchants who extend her credit. She is also seduced into a number of affairs in a vain search for true romance.

Now this is tricky stuff to build a movie around and still retain sympathy for Emma whose actions otherwise seem self indulgent and hedonistic.

Minnelli's version used narration based on Flaubert's text and we learn from the beginning that Emma was driven by an unattainable romantic vision. In this version, directed by Sophie Barthes, there is no narration, we must catch the story as it unfolds. For anyone who knows nothing of the story, it may seem at first to be an exposé of predatory credit practices in 1850's France.

But as Emma is drawn into extramarital affairs, we sense the looming tragedy; she is naive and seduced by notions of romance that cannot be fulfilled and all the men in her life take advantage of her.

This film is beautifully made. It has a more authentic look than the B/W Minnelli version, which was shot on the MGM backlot. However that version's detachment from reality added to its charm. Even the scores for the two films mark the differences; a lush, powerful work for Minnelli; a subtle one for Barthes.

The character of Charles is also treated more sympathetically in the earlier version; here he seems a bit of a jerk.

However the success of "Madame Bovary" comes down to Emma. Mia Wasikowska is a quieter beauty than Jennifer Jones who had a sensuousness that leapt from the screen. Wasikowska's Emma slips under your guard, she has a fragile quality and the problems of debt and infidelity develop at a slower pace. Eventually she seems more a victim of other people's shortcomings than her own.

The two versions are so different that they can be enjoyed on their own terms. However some of the criticism of this version seems harsh. It unfolds at a measured pace, but I think it will become more appreciated over time.