I fully expected this film to be a good deal better than it was. After all, it is was based on highly potent source material – a great romantic French novel. The director, Claude Chabrol, is one whose films I have uniformly enjoyed, after five such prior experiences. And the lead actress, Isabelle Hubbard, is not only touted as one of the greatest French actresses of all time but had impressed me personally in two previous exposures to her work. Nevertheless, the film presently under discussion is very dull indeed. It was all I could do to stick with it to the end.

Historical Background: The film Madame Bovary is an adaptation of a novel of the same name written by Gustave Flaubert in 1856. The title character, Emma Bovary, has become one of the most famous characters from French literature, after causing quite a stir when the book was first published. Many people of that era were morally scandalized by Flaubert’s sympathetic treatment of a woman who engaged in adultery and ran up debts by frivolous expenditures. The style of the novel was detached and clinical in its presentation or, as Flaubert himself commented, “cold” but “with poise.” In the book, Flaubert skillfully balanced responsibility for the tragic outcome between factors internal to Emma (selfish, shallow personality) with external ones (societal conventions stifling to married women) to ensure a degree of empathy for the character but not too much. In comparison to Anna Karenina, which covers similar thematic territory, Emma’s downfall engenders less sympathy than Anna’s for a couple of reasons. First, while Anna’s one great love affair had the feel of romantic necessity, Emma seems motivated by little more than boredom and a shallow romantic impulse. Second, the social restrictiveness of Russian aristocratic society in Anna Karenina was much more overbearing and relentless than that which middle class French society imposed on Emma.

The Story: Emma (Isabelle Huppert) is the unmarried daughter of a prosperous widowed farmer in rural France. When her father breaks his leg, Emma becomes acquainted with the town’s physician, Charles Bovary (François Balmer). He is also widowed and, though a good deal older, Emma counts him a good match by which to advance her station in society. With some initiative on the part of Emma’s father and a brief courtship, the match is soon made. At first, Emma is pleased to have escaped the boredom of her father’s farm, but after just six months of marriage, she finds herself even more bored with life as a married woman in a hick town. When Charles and Emma are invited to the Marquis’s ball, Emma gets a brief taste of the high life and wants more.

Emma soon acquires the attentions of a young lawyer, Leon Dupuis (Lucas Belvaux), who, realizing that he is hopelessly in love with Emma, has the good sense to move away to the city. Emma next captivates the attentions of a landowner and decadent seducer, Rodolphe Boulanger (Christophe Malavoy), and is easily drawn into a protracted affair with him. The two prepare to run away together – or, at least Emma does. Rodolphe backs out at the last moment, probably never intending to follow through, after Emma has run up huge expenses purchasing a travel trunk, expensive coat, and other fineries.

Emma suffers ever deepening bouts of depression, which the loyal Charles struggles to help her overcome. He takes her to an opera in the city, where they renew acquaintance with Leon Dupuis. Emma is soon carrying on a sordid affair with that young man as well. Charles, who works a long day in his physician’s practice in partnership with the chemist Homais (Jean Yanne), is oblivious to Emma’s infidelities and remains devoted to her, but her feelings for him vacillate only between indifference and contempt.

Emma begins to run up debts with the local milliner, purchasing gifts for her lovers and fineries for herself on credit. Ultimately, the milliner demands payment and gets a court order allowing the bailiff to assess the property of the Bovary household in preparation for attachment. Emma turns to every ally she can think of trying to raise the cash to cover her debt, but all are either unwilling or unable to help. Dreading the discovery of her irresponsibilities by Charles, Emma consumes arsenic from the apothecary and dies miserably. Arsenic poisonings are a particularly gruesome death.

Themes: Emma Bovary suffers from boredom combined with a naïve and excessively romanticized notion of the joys due her in life. She pictures herself living the lifestyle of the haut-bourgeois but her lot in life is petit-bourgeois status. She is self-centered, largely disinterested in her daughter (leaving most of the child care to a local peasant woman), and lacking in talents or work skills. She finds brief respites from her ennui in special events (the ball, going to the city) and affairs, but has failed to understand that the only viable long term solution to boredom has to come from within oneself. In the novel, a share of the blame for Emma’s boredom can be apportioned to the restrictions imposed by social expectations in French bourgeois society, but little of that comes through in the movie, rendering the film version of Emma a less sympathetic character. It’s difficult, in this version, to place much of the blame on restrictions related to either her gender or social position. Her affairs seem shallow and mainly motivated by boredom rather than either sex or love. Her expenditures seem entirely frivolous.

Production Values and Failings: Since Chabrol had plenty of previous experience in his film working with such issues as adultery and greed but little experience with period drama per se, one might assume that the failings of this film might pertain to capturing the period atmosphere. Not so! As a period film, Madame Bovary is sumptuous in its detail, authenticity, and visuals. Chabrol is also meticulous to a fault in remaining faithful to the story of the novel. Sometimes, however, it is more important to capture the spirit of the novel than to adhere to its detail. One gets the sense that Chabrol had no clear independent vision for this film or, at least, none that came through.

Chabrol’s use of narrative in this film is jarringly ineffective. It is not until many minutes into the film that the narrator makes his first entry. By then, it is entirely unexpected and seems to come out of nowhere. The narrator sometimes covers a big chunk of elapsed time in just a few sentences and it is often the time during which Emma is growing dissatisfied, such as after her first six months of marriage. We have no reason to empathize with her ennui because it is simply announced.

Emma Bovary, as depicted in this film, is not a good or likable person. She is unable to love a husband who, though a dullard, is a successful physician and a devoted partner. Worse, she complains of boredom while ignoring her lovely daughter. Emma is a selfish, spoiled brat of a woman who brings on her own downfall by the shallowness of her own personality and choices. Then, Huppert aggravates the film’s problem with this central character by playing the part without passion. Although Huppert was a great film star, she was most effective at playing the ice-goddess (strong, introverted, passive types). It’s hard to support a character in an adulterous relationship unless we at least see a burning passion for romance seething beneath the surface. This is not the great character of the novel, but merely a pale facsimile. I was delighted with Huppert in Coup de Torchon (1981) and Entre Nous (1983) and I understand that she was also highly effective in such films as The Lacemaker (1977), Violette Noziere (1977) and Heaven’s Gate (1980), but you’d never know it from this particular outing. The remainder of the cast provided entirely adequate performances. Jean Yanne, who played Homais here, starred in two excellent earlier Chabrol films, Le Boucher (1969) and This Man Must Die (1970).

Bottom-Line: Madame Bovary is a largely unsatisfying film. It is boring and the title character evokes little interest or concern. It is a joyless exercise in self-destruction by stupidity. Madame Bovary is in French with English subtitles and has an interminable running time of 130 minutes. Pass on it!

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older