Quick Summary: Sophie Barthes' version of Madame Bovary is prettily shot and sumptuously costumed, but the title character comes across as an unlikeable jerk.

Title: Madame Bovary

Release: 2014

Director: Sophie Barthes

Starring:

Mia Wasikowska (Emma)

Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Charles Bovary)

I have to admit, I have never read Flaubert's Madame Bovary. It's a classic novel, but one that, for whatever reason, never tempted me. After watching this film, I'm even less interested in reading the book than before. It isn't that this is technically a bad film. The scenery and costuming are wonderful, and the acting very convincing. The problem is that I didn't like the main character at all.

When we first meet Emma (Mia Wasikowska), she is a schoolgirl in a convent, preparing for a marriage to a man she hardly knows. At this point in the movie, I had some sympathy for Emma. She's presented as young and immature, a person who does not yet know herself, thrust into a situation over which she has little control. She lacks a sense of her own agency, allowing herself to be pushed wherever the winds of fate might take her. She doesn't know enough about herself, or the world, to make a definitive choice towards good or evil. After Emma's marriage to Dr. Charles Bovary, she grows to become more aware of herself and her place in the world - and then proceeds to use her new-found sense of self-assurance to become even more foolish and uncaring. She runs up 10 000 francs in debt on dresses and furniture (and this in the 1840s or 50s!), has affairs with anything wearing pants, and bullies her husband into attempting an experimental surgery that kills his reluctant patient. Emma becomes a thoughtless jerk, the personification of a certain careless, petty sort of evil.

While I didn't really care for the film, I think it will appeal to costume aficionados. I had no doubt that the multitude of elaborate dresses Emma wears could have gone a long way towards getting her 10 000 francs in debt. The clothing is beautiful. The scenery is also lovely. It's too bad that the main character's heart and soul are not.