Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. But even her affairs bring her disappointment, and when real life continues to fail to live up to her romantic expectations, the consequences are devastating. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. Apart from a bit of recognition for production values including cinematography, sets, location detail, costumes, I have to give this sloppy, bloodless and point-missing attempt the welcome it deserves.Madame Bovary - 'Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?' Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. I rarely write reviews but, when such violence is done to one of the great works of world literature, I do get annoyed. Worst of all its many bad decisions, this film totally eliminates the Bovarys' baby daughter Berthe, whose existence is essential to our understanding of how huge the final tragedy really is and its domino effects far beyond Emma and Charles. Boneheaded decisions abound, such as the decision to change the sumptuous, romantic ball that quickened Emma's economic and sensual envy into a grubby, sweaty stag hunt. Why are these men so attracted to her beyond an impression that she'd be "easy"? The whole plot involving Leon's legitimate reasons for visiting the house is mangled, as is the genesis of the attempt by Charles to correct Hippolyte's medical issue and the surgery's outcome. The Emma character has no obvious allure in this adaptation. (Don't know if he ever did it, but the young Gerard Depardieu is the perfect physical type.) This is important because her spouse's rustic dullness as she perceives it has to be seen in the actor chosen. Instead we get this svelte, firm, and resolute executive type with patent-leather hair. Charles Bovary is supposed to be a large, good-natured, undemanding drudge of a man, hard-working and country bumpkin-ish without any slim, well-tailored glamour.
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