Gemma Bovery [DVD]

Madame Bovary was famously bored with everything, thus ennui became her undoing. Flaubert’s obvious point was to satirise the emptiness and banality of bourgeois middle-class existence, its people non-people, just commodities of the new capitalism. So if they were spiritually empty, this was because they sold their souls to commerce and commercialism. As such, a drug like sex was a palliative for the disaffected, a temporary haven of pleasure and oblivion. Physical abandon made Emma forget everything, including her dull, nondescript husband Charles, an apothecary.Twenty-first century Gemma Bovery is an equal of Flaubert’s creation: young, beautiful, empty, bored. She’s English, a new arrival in Normandy with her English husband Charlie. He doesn’t dispense tinctures, but he’s as dull as one who does. They come to France and their new village with high hopes, buying a rundown cottage at a cut-price rate. They aim to reinvent themselves, to become European, to speak French and learn more about wine, cheese and the other stereotypes that foreigners use to define the French. They are comic and tragic figures, though in their seriousness they can’t notice it. As they start to settle in and socialise the local French women gossip that Gemma is shallow and boring. It isn’t that her French is poor, though it is. It’s that there’s no there there behind the façade of beauty. Has her husband noticed? Perhaps not, distracted by the good sex. Or good back in Britain. Here in France Gemma can’t seem to properly settle in. So, unsettled, her gaze starts to wander and rove.Villages are the same everywhere. People live on top of each other. Everybody knows everybody else and the local sport is gossip. People see that Gemma is antsy. Perhaps they titter to themselves that she’s got ants in her pants. But ants won’t be the only things that enter them. She needs love, or the physical approximation of it. Charlie used to provide it, but now the thrill is gone. Frenchmen are the greater adventure: European, sophisticated, witty, worldly. And — critical point — romantic. The sweet nothings they whisper to women come like breathing to them, whereas Englishmen are always clumsy and ridiculous when they try. They can never pull it off, so their idea of romance, or a prelude to it, is getting sloshed at the pub. Not so with debonair French males. They don’t need to be blotto to love. Poetry is in their manner and language. They are born lovers. So, Gemma has come to the right place, a place that compounds the layers of irony for her husband. He thought they would start a new life in France. They do — just not the one he imagined and expected.What makes Gemma so shallow? Is it beauty and sex appeal? The same question haunted Flaubert about Emma. Had she been less attractive would she have been more interesting by having interesting interests? Is beauty the default setting for mentally lazy women? An unanswerable question of course, but we may ask it anyway because it intrigues us.At any rate, the shallowness can lead to no good. In fact, it will create complications that lead to the opposite. Frenchman Martin notices this. He’s a middle-aged, nosy neighbour and is star-struck by Gemma. He’s the local baker in the village, the man who watches the bread rise. That’s about the apogee of thrills in his daily life, so Gemma provides a distraction and attraction that interests him. In fantasy he’s her lover, though he knows he never can be in reality. So he vicariously gets off on the adulterous affairs Gemma will have with other, younger, more attractive males. Or perhaps “gets off” is the wrong expression. Jealousy is more like it, a jealousy that makes him feel alive again, a feat his wife and disaffected teenage son cannot provide. Until Gemma came along he was half dead, rotting in the village, the bakery, his home. She provides drama in an uneventful life.Who are the lovers Gemma takes on? I won’t breathe a word about them here. Much better to see the film. How does husband Charlie bear up? Not very well, as imagined. And Gemma’s fate? Not exactly that of Emma’s but similar. Women like this are a danger to themselves. This seems to be the comic, tragic, sexist verdict. They are the architects of their own demise.Martin is a reader. He is also imaginative. In Gemma he sees strains of Emma. He loved Emma as a teenager, devoured Flaubert. He wanted passion, romance, love in his life. Instead, he has flour and dough. He longs to hold Gemma in his arms, even knowing this increases the danger to her life and mental stability. Thus the paradox.Martin believes he is clairvoyant. It’s because he knows the novel so well in splendid detail. So when he sees, or thinks he sees, certain patterns from the novel repeating themselves in Gemma’s life, he is alarmed. What to do? In life, just as in literature, we can feel powerless, silent witnesses to actions we cannot influence.That’s the cleverness in the commentary of the film. It says there’s always overlap between life and art because just as one produces the other, each can influence the other in strange ways. Gemma is not an exact copy of Emma because the world has changed since Flaubert’s day. But human emotion has not changed, so Gemma can be seen as a facsimile of the original Emma.The final joke in the film is that another foreign couple moves into the village after the saga of English Charlie and Gemma. This couple is from Russia and rents or buys an empty cottage in the village. The woman’s name is Anna Karenina, a woman Martin begins to fall in love with from the very start. Is there a railway in the village? Pertinent question Tolstoy would have asked.

When an English couple move to a small French village, the local baker becomes obsessed with the fantasy that they are acting out Madame Bovary, a famous French novel. I wasn't familiar with the novel, but it made no difference to my enjoyment of the movie. The cast works well for all the characters, especially the comical baker and his eye-rolling wife, along with the wonderful Gemma Arterton. It's a fairly gentle tale told with a lot of charm in typical French fashion. Not for anyone who wants loads of action or a thrill ride but very enjoyable for those who like something with a bit more charm.

Reassuringly for those who have had enough of Madame Bovary both at the theatre and the cinema, ’Gemma Bovery’ is not yet another adaptation of the seminal novel. Instead, it is based on a playful, graphic novella by Posy Simmonds that explores the underlying themes of Flaubert’s book in the contemporary world with delightful wit and wry humour, a perfect storyboard for a movie. In the capable hands of Anne Fontaine though, Simmonds’ story transforms to a delicious blend of poignant romance and perceptive satire, a captivating and tantalising tale that constantly and unpredictably changes its tone from sensuality to comedy and tragedy to farce. The story is also ingeniously enigmatic, in that we are never certain as to whether it is entirely or partially imagined in the literate mind of Martin Joubert, the central character, who in effect is the writer and director. A deeply satisfying experience, ’Gemma Bovery’ leaves us longing for that illusive romance in the sun-drenched, pastoral idyll of Normandy, so evoking treasured memories of our own.The masterstroke here is the impeccable pairing of Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton, who are not just well cast, but are indispensable to the narrative. Arterton with her natural sensuality and entrancing vivacity is simply adorable and therefore haunting as Gemma Bovery, the more liberated but still fragile, modern incarnation of Emma Bovary, an epitome of the emotional complexity of a progressive woman. Equally irresistible is Luchini as Martin Joubert, an accomplished actor, whose extraordinary ability to effortlessly express complex emotions, the rare gift of subtle improvisation and vulnerable yet mesmerising presence make the character so endearing that the audience is compelled to desire intimacy between him and Gemma. That yearning for an unattainable but magical romance underpins the story, and Fontaine skilfully exploits the mounting tension to explore profound truths about human behaviour, with her feminine sensibilities making the movie as delectable as a freshly baked baguette. The conclusion however is perplexing, for the abrupt and unanticipated twist from tragedy to comedy may leave some viewers wondering whether to cry or laugh, depending on their disposition. It is undeniable though that ’Gemma Bovery’ is an enchanting film that is worth seeing again and again.

I AM A GREAT FAN OF GEMMA ARTERTON AND HAVE NEARLY ALL HER FILMS BUT I AM AFRAID THIS ONE WAS DISSAPOINTING IT WAS MAINLY SUBTITLED BECAUSE THEY ALL SPOKE IN FRENCH SO WHILE YOU READ THE SUBTITLES YOU LOSE THE GEST OF THE FILM DONT GET ME WRONG GEMMA IS A VERY TALENTED AND SEXY ACTRESS BUT GEMMA I HAVE SEEN BETTER.....

I was so glad Amazon had this film. It was recommended to me from a French learning site for both a great story and French that was relatively easy to understand ( some of the dialogue is in English as there are English characters but they also speak French like someone who is learning would ; ie it is relatively uncomplicated structures and vocabulary. I adore French language films and am so glad that Amazon carry quite a fews. I can honestly also say however that regardless of this, it is a great script and highly entertaining . I rented it but am even thinking to buy as it is something I could several times over.

This parody of Madame Bovary, based on the Posy Simmonds graphic novel, is sad, funny and wholly enjoyable. It's also an insightful commentary into British attitudes to the French and vice-versa.

Anything Gemma Arterton does seems to work, a great actor