Madame Bovary [DVD] [1991]

C'EST MAGNIFIQUE...
This is an excellent adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert novel of the same name. Isabelle Huppert is superb as the central character, Emma, a prosperous farmer's daughter, who marries a doctor, Charles Bovary (Jean Francois Balmer). He is a kind and gentle soul who adores her and wants nothing more than to make her happy. The problem is that he does not know how. Even Emma does not really know what would make her happy.

This is the story of Emma Bovary and her unhappy, wasted, shallow life. She is a woman who on the surface seems to have everything, an adoring, doting husband, a lovely, healthy daughter, an attractive well appointed home. Yet, she is unhappy. She loathes her husband, finding him pedantic and dull. She has little time for her daughter and seems to have little motherly instincts. What worldly goods she has never seem to ber enough.

Seeking fulfillment, she takes lovers who always seem to fail her in the end. She mistakes passion for love and never...

The Madame of Bad Decisions
This film is a French adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's classic tale of human bondage, "Madame Bovary."

I expected this adaptation to be better than others I have seen simply because it was done by the French, but sadly the film does not hold up to Flaubert's original work. Isabelle Huppert does a so-so job as the lead character, the great sufferer, Madame Bovary. Huppert does not show enough passion and emotion for my taste though, the original character is consumed by suffering and desperately stabs at whatever form of relief comes her way, but Huppert doesn't quite get any depth out of this performance. She looks lovely in her period costumes however. Madame Bovary succumbed to adultery, debtful spending habits and even suicide while being married to Dr. Bovary and never feeling passionately satisfied with her life. The character is both the ultimate victim of her own circumstances and that of the stigma society held over women of her time. In the classic novel she...

Flaubert + Chabrol = Period Drama
"Madame Bovary," based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert, stars Isabelle Huppert in the title role. Unsuccessfully prosecuted by the French government as "immoral" after its publication in 1857, "Madame Bovary" is the story of a country doctor's wife bored with the banalities and emptiness of her provincial life in 19th-century France. To escape, she throws herself into love affairs with a suave local landowner (Rodolphe Boulanger) and a law student (Leon Dupuis) and runs up huge debts, much to the dismay of her dull husband. The 1991 film, directed by Claude Chabrol, closely follows Flaubert's novel and beautifully captures most of the famous scenes. Filmed in Rouen and neighboring villages, it lavishly evokes 19th-century France with its winding country roads, meadows, and homes. Period costumes complete the portrait of the era. The movie is in French with English subtitles. The two-disc DVD includes the bonus documentary "Isabelle Huppert: A Life of Acting.

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