"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.
