Madame Bovary

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.

The crunch of the story is forgotten in this diluted adaptation. Anyone not familiar with the story prior to watching this film would be left with the impression that Madame Bovary was a fragile victim who simply fell into circumstances over her head. But this is not who the classic Madame Bovary character was or why she inspired writers and directors to retell her story throughout the years. The classic Madame Bovary is an ambitious, strong-willed woman who connived to continuously improve her status in society, even before she married. She had passion and vision. The character in this film has no redeeming qualities and stumbles through the story as an ungrateful opportunist who becomes less likable as the story progresses. The ethereal atmosphere, cinematography and set design were all remarkable, but combined with the weak storytelling makes this an average film with a forgettable Madame Bovary character.

There's no sexual appealing at all for this actress to play the Bovary role. There's no character development at all from a housewife then becoming a adulterer. We couldn't feel anything from her inside; always with the similar facial expressions, it never changed a bit. She made Madame Bovary a very boring woman. A terrible wrong cast, maybe the worst one ever!

I loved the novel and was looking forward to the movie. Stopped watching when I first saw Leon. This actor is too young for that role. The color of his voice, his laughter, the look on his face, the overall expression - he looks 18. That ruined the movie for me. What on Earth were they thinking?! Emma would never fall for a guy like that.

Oh, talking about Emma... Seriously? Mia Wasikowska? The same way I think they made a mistake with choosing Keira Knightley for Anna Karenina, I think she would have been much better choice for Emma, in this case.

OK, enough of bad criticism now. This movie looks expensive and very endearing for the eyes. Both, the costumes and the scenery look realistic. I would imagine XIX century France like this.

"Madame Bovary" was already transferred twice to the screen in its native country :Jean Renoir's version (1934) is generally considered the best ;the more recent version by Claude Chabrol who claimed he "made the movie Flaubert would have done" ;there's also Vincente Minnelli's film, starring the most beautiful romantic Emma ever in the shape of Jennifer Jones .

Mrs Barthes took more liberties with the novel than any of her colleagues,sometimes not for the best: it's really a bad idea to replace the Marquis' ball by a hunting with hounds : a ball is par excellence the place where a woman can shine,dazzle all the men around and outstrip all her rivals:Flaubert's depiction of the soiree ,which is the turning point of the novel ,reveals Emma's monotonous living,her longing for a socialite life ,for a romantic love story her meek oafish hubby cannot give to her;the Marquis ,becoming Emma's lover , led the screenwriters to do without Rodolphe Boulanger ,which may disappoint the readers.Gone is Emma 's daughter -she wanted a boy and she found her ugly- who landed as a working girl in a spinning mill ,ironical fate for a daughter whose mom wanted to climb the social scale.On the other hand,Lheureux,Emma's evil genius, is given a (too) prominent role ,and Monsieur Homais ,the atheist chemist hardly appears ,he 's only in it to urge Charles to operate on Hippolyte,the person with club- foot ;the scene in the church with the vicar is much weaker than its equivalent in Renoir's movie;the agricultural meeting fete is botched ,and passes over in silence the way Flaubert showed "the poverty of the century " ,in the shape of a very old lady who is awarded a medal after a life of hard labor.(Renoir did not forget that either)

The movie is not completely wretched though.Mia Wasikowska is a very credible Emma ,and even if her suicide may surprise Flaubert's readers,the final scene with these torches in the night is cinematographically dazzling(but the prologue which makes the movie a flashback is pointless);Charles Bovary(Henry Loyd-Hughes) is exactly how Flaubert depicted him,an unambitious good man with a small mind, whose main pleasure in life is to sit down at table and enjoy his meal;the wedding night -not shown in precedent versions- is revealing .To get a semblance of a luxury life,she's seized by a compulsive desire to buy mountain of things ,most of which are thoroughly useless.She lives in a world of illusion,even Leon (Ezra Miller)holds a second-rate position he may easily loose if he continues with his romance with a married woman.

This new version will probably not go down in cinema history.But ,even though the screenplay is eminently debatable,the cinematography is splendid indeed.