Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert's classic 19th-century novel has been filmed by Jean Renoir, Claude Chabrol, and Vincente Minnelli. In Sophie Barthes' new version, Mia Wasikowska stars as the titular ambitious wife of a country doctor, a woman who swallows arsenic, after which her story is told in flashbacks. Completing her convent education, young Emma is immediately betrothed to Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), a tediously dull, provincial physician in a Normandy village. Although she tries to be dutiful, social-climbing Emma is the original dissatisfied, desperate housewife. Seeking amorous adventure, she impulsively engages in consecutive adulterous affairs, starting with the Marquis (Logan Marshall-Green), a wealthy nobleman, and followed by Leon (Ezra Miller), a law clerk and former neighbor. While the pharmacist, Monsieur Homais (Paul Giamatti), is pompous, the sleaziest of all is sly merchant Monsieur Lheureaux (Rhys Ifans), who sells shopaholic Emma extravagant dresses on credit and then humiliates her when she attempts to prostitute herself to pay for her purchases. Madame Bovary effectively chronicles a time when women were virtually trapped—unable to work and denied divorce. But delicate, twentysomething Wasikowska seems too immature and lacks the essential, pervasive sexuality that drives flawed-but-fascinating Emma Bovary. Superficially faithful, but quickly forgettable, this is an optional purchase. (S. Granger)