No thanks, Madame!
Directed by: Sophie Barthes
Written by: Felipe Marino, Gustave Flaubert
Cast: Ezra Miller, Mia Wasikowska, Paul Giamatti
Swift shot: Almost 90 minutes of complete boredom. You’d think I was exaggerating, but I am not. I guess that is what I deserve for finally watching this, oh so controversial story, on film. If you sit all the way through this one, congrats, you don’t have ADHD, or ADD, or whatever the hell crap they are feeding parents about their kids these days.
Emma (Wasikowska) is essentially a spoiled-brat who has never been able to settle down, let’s call her a flibberty gibbet, because she starts off in a kind of nunnery or something. I have no idea, and even by this point, I had all but lost interest. The action doesn’t start until 32 minutes in, when Emma crosses a rocky stream that was as wide as my cubicle. It does pick up the pace, mercifully, in the final act, but God bless you if you make it that far. It is only my commitment to be professional that I watched this entire film.
Anyway, Emma is betrothed to Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), presumably by an arranged marriage, since she’s never set foot outside her odd school where they dance with sticks while nuns look on in disgust. Once she arrives at her modest country estate, now as Madame Bovary, she is almost immediately bored and apathetic towards her new husband. Granted, the guy is a pussy, has no drive, and can’t even say, “hey, honey, thanks for spending all day making these pastries.”
No, Charles makes it painfully clear, he is only her husband when he comes home from work, and she is on her own until then . . . and pretty much throughout the film. So, enter the parasite, no, oddly not a lawyer in this case, rather a traveling salesman, Monsieur Lheureux (Rhys Ifans) who is eager to dangle exotic wares in front of the new bride, and assures her he will extend her credit to buy whatever she wants, no, whatever she needs.
He is the second villain, after boredom (which becomes an entity all itself) that you can see becoming a problem for Emma Bovary. Her boredom opens the door for suitors from different walks of life. One is a helpless romantic, Leon (Miller) who is really just a frustrated law clerk. The other, The Marquis (Logan Marshall-Green) is a dashing adventurer. But, like both reality and fantasy, the contradistinction of the two characters is pointless, as both are equally devilish for poor, helpless Emma.
As her life begins to unravel before her, Emma gives a visual homage to “running all over town” trying to set her life back on course. But, with all the turns she makes, she ends up only running into . . . accountability. And the spectator is forced to wonder if she deserves any sympathy. No.
It’s funny, when I first heard about Madame Bovary I think I was watching some old movie and the characters were snickering about how they had read it and it was ever so naughty. It was, in that respect, very much like Fifty Shades of Grey, and the comparisons don’t end there. Both pushed the social mores of their time, and both were equally vapid on screen. I mean, wow, I counted so many scenes where Emma is just sitting there. Emma might as well be dead, as her days spent waiting for her husband to come home and acknowledge her give the impression that she is basically a ghost.
So, if watching an attractive woman sit around all day in fairly stylish period clothing is your thing, hold onto your butts, Madame Bovary will blow your ankle skirts up! I hope I have painted a picture of why it’s better sometimes to let curiosity die, Madame Bovary is a great story about punishment for many sins, but it could have been a much shorter film.
I am waiting on a modern version of this film, which might actually be good, where a bored house-wife turns to Tinder or Ashley Madison, and her credit card debt swallows her up and devours her soul, something that will reach today’s audiences. Only die hard romantics and sycophants of literature might enjoy this motion picture . . . even that is a misnomer, as there is hardly any motion!
