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19 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :- An impossible task?, 12 January 2004 Author: jonr-3 from Kansas City, Missouri, USA
I agree with the consensus here that this film adaptation is largely unsatisfying. However, I question whether Flaubert's masterpiece can ever be translated graciously to the screen. I suspect that a novel famous for having every word exactly in place, and whose appeal lies as much in the relentless poetic flow of its prose as in the brutally frank psychological characterization of its heroine (and a few other characters!), may be forever out of the reach of other media, and might best be left to pursue its own life on paper.I also agree that Ms. Huppert's portrayal is cold, but I've always seen Emma as being that way. After all--she's nuts. Crazy people are seldom full of human warmth. Emma Bovary is among the select handful of fictional characters neurotic enough to have given their names to a pathological condition (in this case, bovarism).It's always possible to admire a movie for its visual beauty, and this one wins hands-down in that category. But if you want the full impact of the wretched, wrenching story--you have to go back to the book. I applaud Mr. Chabrol for trying, even if he didn't succeed, to make a perhaps impossible adaptation.
9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :- Cold look at a French literary classic, 11 November 2004 Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@cox.net) from Oceanside, Ca.
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Even when a film tries to be as completely faithful as it can to the original source it can still end up lacking something that just doesn't transfer over to the big screen. There is definitely something missing here although it's hard to put a finger on it but it may be based on the way the story is presented. Story is about Emma (Isabelle Huppert) who lives with her father and dreams of a more exciting life and when she meets Dr. Charles Bovary (Jean-Francois Balmer) she looks at this as an opportunity for something different.*****SPOILER ALERT*****Emma marries Charles and at first she's happy but as time passes she becomes bored and loses interest in her husband but when he mentions the opportunity to move to a bigger town she agrees where he sets up a new practice. Emma and Charles have a daughter but this doesn't stop her from having affairs with Rodolphe (Christophe Malavoy) and Leon (Lucas Belvaux) and she also runs up a considerable debt with the hope that she will have run off with her lover before her husband finds out.This film is directed by Claude Chabrol who specializes in dramas about lust and greed and selfishness and one would think that he would be perfect to direct but truthfully he seems out of his realm with period pieces. This is the ninth version of the 1857 novel by Gustave Flaubert and Chabrol carefully follows the story faithfully and even shot his film in or near Rouen where Flaubert lived but even with all this the film comes across as mostly disconnected and cold. Huppert is arguably the best actress to come out of France in 20 years and she does have some poignant moments and scenes but she just might be to good to play an unfaithful dreamer because she's more adept at portraying more complicated characters. At times she swoons like Emma would in a romantic novel but it doesn't come across as believable even though Huppert generally makes this effort watchable. Chabrol gives us an Emma that is totally unsympathetic and that sounds interesting but it is hard to feel one way or another for her especially considering that this film runs for a solid 2 1/2 hours. If your a fan of Flaubert's novel or of Huppert than you might want to give this a viewing but for others this is probably just to long and emotionally distant to stay with although I personally can watch anything Huppert is in.
4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- the film Flaubert would have made from his novel, 15 April 2007 Author: dbdumonteil
This was Claude Chabrol's intention and it's easier to say than to do. Gustave Flaubert's novel was so rich, undulating that any adaptation in images can only be reducing and simplistic. More than the tragic story of its heroine, Flaubert's novel encompassed a word picture of Normandy (the bulk of the film was shot in the village of Lyons-La-Forêt near Rouen) and a cruel, cynical vision of the world. If the first feature is satisfying on the screen, the second one is hardly perceptible. Hence, this crucial question: is it possible to fully recreate Flaubert's novel? Chabrol's film is faithful to the main plot with the rise and fall of her heroine sometimes told by François Périer's voice-over in spite of accelerated views on certain vital episodes, notably the peasant marriage that disgusted Emma Bovary. On the other hand, the crest of the novel (the ball to the marquis) found a perfect equivalent in Chabrol's film with this shot which goes through the turning dresses creating thus a whirlpool. The glittering life Emma dreams of instead of a dull one with her mediocre husband Charles.Chabrol is buoyed by topnotch interpretations. Even if Isabelle Huppert is a convincing Emma Bovary, a woman whose messy dreams and follies badly conceal boredom and disgust of her condition, the other main actors steal the show with Jean-François Balmer as the perfect, narrow-minded Charles Bovary, Christophe Malavoy as unfaithful Rodolphe Boulanger and Jean Yanne as the unscrupulous chemist Homais."Madame Bovary" is aesthetically a refined work with lush scenery and lavish costumes that recreate rural life in Normandy in the middle of the nineteenth Century. But Chabrol doesn't break new ground with this adaptation that required something else than an elegant directing, a brilliant cast and splendid scenery. That's why his rendering of Flaubert's work is just an honorable reading of the novel in the end. One could also add that Flaubert's book was a solid opportunity for an onslaught at provincial lower middle class. But it's only skimmed over and it's a wasted bonanza.Chabrol's reading of "Madame Bovary" amounts to the same result as Claude Berri's adaptation of Emile Zola's epic novel "Germinal" in 1993: honorable instead of being unforgettable, a commendable action instead of a ground-breaking creation. The author of "le Boucher" (1970) was rather on the wrong track but fortunately, he'll find his way again the following year with another woman depiction: "Betty" (1992). Georges Simenon's universe suits him much better than Flaubert's one.
5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- Probably the worst collaboration between Chabrol and Huppert..., 29 December 2006 Author: jeremy-giroux from France
This movie was really deceptive to me. First, I wanted to watch it as I know that Isabelle Huppert and Claude Chabrol have amazing talents. After watching it, I thought that they both failed. I explain myself : Huppert is too pragmatic and cold to play this role. It seems like she plays every single scene as if she knew what kind of effect she will have on the people around. It's quite borrying. Emma Bovary is not Nana (from Zola's novel), she is someone who is not so interested in success, she is far more interested by passions. She is a woman living in dreams and thinking than life can be passionate as novels. I read the novel just a week before and I think that Flaubert describes well the fact that Emma Bovary is only interested in herself, in her feelings and in a "romanesque" conception of love. Huppert is far too pragmatic and not really romantic. Some scenes look "grotesque" as the one when after dancing with the Baron, she almost faints. It looks like Huppert uses a trick, which makes the scene look false. Moreover, she was probably too old to play the part of Emma Bovary (in the novel, Emma Bovary is twenty or thirty, surely not forty years old). Huppert got the part when she was almost forty and she looks too self-assured to play it well. For example, when she says to Rodolphe that she could have given her life for him, she bugles like mad woman though Emma is a passionate and really weak person. By never showing her weakness, Huppert don't find the good way to play this character.An actress like Anne Brochet or, Irène Jacob would have suited for the part perfectly (these two actresses look young enough). Isabelle Adjani would have probably been too passionate and not enough dreamy to play that part. Jeanne Balibar would have been great too. The other problem is in the way the movie is directed. The beginning of the story is all summed-up by Chabrol who doesn't show the fact that Emma Bovary and her husband Charles are far far different. The voice-over is not a great idea to explain that situation... and the fact that these scenes are so short make probably the actors play their part in a kind of caricature of themselves (which is the main problem of Huppert's interpretation). I think that Huppert and Chabrol were probably too confident to make that movie and that's probably why it can be so deceptive. The cinematography is not so intense and it looks like a movie made for TV. It could have been a quite good adaptation for a movie made for TV and released on a week evening but it's really not enough for a Cinema movie, made by two masters of Cinema.
14 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :- Chabrol lays an egg, 16 March 2004 Author: William J. Fickling (wjfickling@earthlink.net) from Columbia, South Carolina, USA
I am usually the most avid of Chabrol fans, but with Madame Bovary he finally made a real turkey. This film is dull dull dull. I probably could have abided the tediousness and the fastidious faithfulness to the book if the film had a lead actress who was even remotely credible in the lead. But Huppert is woefully miscast as Emma. Emma Bovary is supposed to be a passionate woman who recklessly throws herself into adulterous affairs. Huppert plays Emma as an ice princess, about as passionate as a bowl of oatmeal! Huppert achieves the astonishing feat of maintaining the same facial expression throughout the film; at times I wondered if her facial muscles were paralyzed. This would have been a perfect role for Isabel Adjani...too bad. Read the book instead.6/10
5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- Flaubert Wthout Passion, 29 June 2006 Author: Hammerfanatic46 from United Kingdom
Strangely anaemic version of Flauberts classic novel.This movie looks wonderful ,meticulously recreating a French country town in the mid-Nineteenth Centuary , but singularly fails to inject any life into its characters.The main problem is the normally excellent Isabelle Huppert's performance as the eponymous Madame B,not only does she fail to register any real emotion,far less do justice to the many facets of Flauberts creation,but at 39 ,she is,frankly, just to old for the role.The Film is also severely hampered by a leaden script that commits the cardinal sin of adapting a great novel,it employs the device of having a narrator read large chunks of the book.One would think that the 1974 Version of "The Great Gatsby" had amply demonstrated the folly of this approach.A voice-over reading portions of the source-novel is just not cinematic.The BBC's 2000 TV production was a much better attempt at capturing the atmosphere of the Novel as well as the complexities and contradictions of the central character.
8 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :- Good but lacks appeal, 9 March 2001 Author: Sleepy-17 from Colorado
Isabelle Huppert plays the part very coldly, which makes the story more distant. She seems to view romantic sexual pleasure as something to be acquired instead of experienced. The medical scenes, however, are very well done and almost shocking in the staid context of the film's sensationless depiction of marital infidelity. Other Bovarys (Jennifer Jones and Frances O'Connor) have been much more sensual, whereas Isabel is pretty but it never seems that having sexual intercourse with her would be fun. Sorry to put it so crudely, but I always thought that sexual attraction was the point of the story, and also the source of its tragedy.
2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :- Falaubert's Pair At It, 4 December 2006 Author: writers_reign from London, England
On paper Huppert plus Chabrol is an unbeatable parlay but several times it has run out of gas and this, alas, is no exception. Bizarrely Chabrol has opted to film a novel whose essence is tedium - Emma's ennui with the minutiae of day-to-day life is the key to her subsequent actions - by speeding up the pre-marriage sequences so that instead of the stately courtship that would be more apropos we get a scene with Charles Bovary asking her father for Emma's hand; an intermediate scene with Charles watching for the signal (the opening of a shutter) that will signify Emma's agreement and then (all this in less barely one minute of screen time) we cut to the wedding feast. True, Chabrol slows it down later - as well he might with two and a half hours to play with - but the contrast tends to be off-putting. In its favour are the fine sense of period, costumes, decor, etc and though woefully miscast Huppert doesn't do mediocre and remains watchable in anything but overall one is left with the impression of a fine opportunity squandered.
5 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :- Over-economical screenmake of a literary classic, 3 February 2003 Author: Framescourer from London, UK
Just finished watching this film on VHS after a long search of London libraries. Disappointed, but first the good stuff... Huppert does the soul-wrent-in-twain-through-moral-confusion well. The others in the cast are unknown to me but do a better job than on the made for TV version (BBC 2002) simply because they are French (don't live day to day with ironing boards for spines). The costuming is beautiful - this is important to twist the knife as Emma's debt becomes incommutable. The bad stuff - the direction. Or lack of it. La Ceremonie is the only Chabrol film I can remember worth seeing; this film is not as bad as the recent zzz-worth Merci pour le Chocolat... there's French filmmaking and there's unabashed pretension and that film is the latter. The continuity in Bovary is sloppy as is the sound editing (although Chabrol's brother's score's OK). The final straw is Huppert's inability to find some of the naivete that is so engaging in, say, Heaven's Gate. The latter part of the film is good - it's as if her scheming to avoid the fate she is preparing for herself increases the fall she succumbs to. But at the beginning, she's the same character... there's no preparation for a transformation. And WHY - WHY OH WHY does this production insist on white sub-titles? It's such a cheap error! 5/10... buy lots of popcorm.
3 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :- The foolish dreams of a peasant's daugter, 22 August 2003 Author: bruno-chereul (bruno.chereul@wanadoo.fr) from France, Saint-Grégoire 35760
Chabrol , as usual, gives us the best of his science! From the Flaubert's novel we can see Isabelle Huppert Madame Bovary)to go deep into an irreversible misfortune until to commit his own suicide . Alle the characters play like the long and difficult art of Flaubert's art
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