Madame Bovary

The BBC's 2000 adaptation of Flaubert's 1857 novel—a once-scandalous study of a country doctor's wife who destroys her life by indulging her taste for the finer things and engaging in a doomed affair with a nobleman—is curiously tepid, even despite a smoldering sex scene in the forest. As Emma Bovary, Frances O'Connor is attractive and appropriately flighty, but lacks the character's luminous quality, while Hugh Bonneville seems miscast as her husband, underplaying the role of Charles to the point that he becomes a cipher. As Emma's paramour, Rodolphe, Greg Wise is handsome, but stiff; and the young Hugh Dancy looks out of sorts as Léon, Emma's first would-be lover. Beautifully mounted—from the opening convent-school sequences through the ball that spurs Emma's lust for a more sophisticated life to the tragic deathbed conclusion—this Madame Bovary nevertheless suffers in comparison to both Claude Chabrol's 1991 theatrical feature (which has its own flaws—notably Isabelle Huppert's overly stern take on Emma), and Vincente Minnelli's 1949 version starring Jennifer Jones. DVD extras include a biographical featurette on Flaubert written and narrated by Julian Barnes (author of the novel Flaubert's Parrot). Optional. (F. Swietek)