Charles has no inkling of his wife's unhappiness in the marriage or of her affair. They begin an affair, with Emma making regular trips on foot through the woods to visit him. Ashamed of her husband's incompetence and feeling all the more stifled, Emma visits the Marquis at his home and confesses her misery. She also takes the advice of local pharmacist Homais (Paul Giamatti) and convinces her husband to operate on the club-foot of Homais' servant Hippolyte (Luke Tittensor) and become a celebrated surgeon. Emma's thirst for extravagance only grows, and she begins to spend liberally to beautify the house and her wardrobe, all on credit from Lheureux. At the party, she is entranced by the luxury of the upper-class and by the subtle advances of the Marquis, whom she meets once more at an agricultural show. The Marquis was immediately attracted to Emma, who becomes so excited about the excursion into high society that she orders expensive clothes from Lheureux for the occasion. Charles and Emma are invited to a hunting party by the Marquis d'Andervilliers (Logan Marshall- Green), who had dropped by Doctor Bovary's house to have one of his servants treated. ![]() Leon secretly confesses his love to Emma, who, despite the mutual attraction, dismisses his advances. Emma longs to go to Paris and immerse herself in the culture, and has quickly tired of her dull existence as a country doctor's wife. Emma soon befriends a young clerk, Leon Dupuis (Ezra Miller), who shares her romantic frame of mind and disdain for provincial Yonville. With no regular company besides their maid, Henriette (Laura Carmichael), Emma becomes a vulnerable client to the crafty local merchant Lheureux (Rhys Ifans), who entices her with luxury goods available for purchase on credit. During their brief daily time together, Emma is bored and repulsed by his talk of ailments and dull business affairs, and Charles is all but oblivious to her ennui. While Charles loves his new wife, he is consumed by his work and is out of the house all day visiting patients. With high hopes for a fulfilling and romantic future like the ones she reads about in novels, Emma leaves her childhood home and loving father, moving to the small town of Yonville where Charles has based his practice. For those who have forgotten the story, 'In mid-1800s Normandy, France, farmer's daughter Emma (Mia Wasikowska) leaves the convent where she was educated and marries a young doctor, Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes). The only standout in the film is the costumer and the strange but adequately atmospheric music by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine. ![]() The pacing of the film is adagio and the cast is adequate if unremarkable. Yet again we have an incarnation of Flaubert's novel of infidelity and this time the transformation of the book to screen (by Felipe Marino and director Sophie Barthes) is, at best, weak. 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. 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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