Claude Chabrol, one of the founding filmmakers of the French New Wave, was known for his psychological drama and thrillers, many of them adaptations of popular or pulp novels. Madame Bovary (1991) was a rare literary adaptation and period piece for the filmmaker. It proved to be a good match of material and director, who brings out the complicated nature and motivations of one the most fascinating heroines in literature.
Isabelle Huppert stars as Emma Bovary, an unmarried farmer's daughter dreaming of romance and desperate to leave her drab peasant existence for marriage and city life. She chooses the decent and conscientious country doctor Charles Bovary (Jean-François Balmer) as her way out but her fantasies of romantic love and society life are dashed when she finds him dull, unambitious, and weak.
That makes her easy prey for the conniving Rodolphe Boulanger (Christophe Malavoy), a handsome, charming gentleman who preys on her loneliness and unfulfilled passions with poetic proclamations of true love and destiny. When he abandons her, she tries to find contentment in marriage and motherhood but is unfulfilled and takes up with a younger man (Lucas Belvaux) while getting herself in debt all over town.
Emma Bovary is one of the most famous characters in French literature and the novel is considered a masterpiece of world literature, and Chabrol, who also pens the screenplay adaptation, does justice to both. His recreation of 19th century France is both realistic and romantic.
Chabrol and Huppert are both sympathetic to her dissatisfaction and limited options as a woman in a chauvinistic and status-conscious society yet realistic about her reckless, selfish ways and her shallow yearnings informed by the romantic ideals of the novels she devours. That Huppert was in her late thirties when she made the film adds a dimension to Emma, a woman doomed to a life alone (and perhaps in poverty) without a good marriage, yet still under the thrall of romantic fantasies.
He extends his empathy to Dr. Charles Bovary, a dull, unambitious man who is happy in his work and devoted to Emma, yet utterly oblivious to her unhappiness, her spending, or her affairs. He's not a bright man, but he is well-meaning and good to Emma. Madame Bovary earned an Oscar nomination for costume design and it is a beautiful production, but it's the psychological complexity that Chabrol brings to the characters that makes the film so rich.
It's part of the Arrow Blu-ray box set "Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol." The disc features the film's Blu-ray debut in a new 4K restoration, new commentary by film critic Kat Ellinger, the visual essay "Imagining Emma: Madame Bovary on-screen" by film historian Pamela Hutchinson, archival select scene commentary by Chabrol, and an archival introduction by Joel Magny. A previous DVD release is long out of print.
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What kind of film series would this narrative feature fit in?
It would make an excellent choice for a series of screen adaptations of the great novels.
What kind of film collection would this title be suitable for?
Any collection featuring literary adaptations and/or French cinema would benefit from this release.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
It would be a fine addition to any library with a collection of fine international cinema on disc.