COLCOA 2015: GEMMA BOVERY

Gemma (Gemma Arterton) and Martin (Fabrice Lucchini) in Gemma Bovary.

Madame Se(x)e

By John Esther

Rather than another adaptation of Madame Bovary, co-writer and director Anne Fontaine's Gemma Bovery is a light lit-crit cinematic reinterpretation of Gustave Flaubert's great novel.

After years in the publishing business, Martin Joubert (Fabrice Lucchini) has returned to the Northern France town of Normandy (the name of which works better as a play on words in English than in French). Martin may still be a voracious reader, but he now runs his deceased father's bakery. Martin is a natural at baking and seems happiest at work. At home, he has a nice wife, Valérie (Isabelle Candelier), plus a teenage son, Julien (Kacey Mottet Klein) who does not share his father's love of reading.

Life is fairly rudimentary in Normandy for Martin until the day his new neighbors from London arrive: Charles (Jason Flemyng) and Gemma Bovery (Gemma Arterton). For anyone educated in the French system, Charles and Emma Bovery are two of the most famous names in French literature. (Gemma is close enough.) For someone like Martin, the introduction to these people with such notable names is an existential punctum. 

Curious if life will imitate literature, Martin begins to watch Gemma. Sure enough, the bored housewife of Normandy begins to imitate the bored housewife of Normandy. Love, affairs, betrayal and tragedy ensue. But there are differences between the literary archetype and the cinematic simulacrum; only Martin ignores what does not necessarily fit into his narrative.

A film that could only be made in a country where literature is widely consumed and considered worthy of one's time, Gemma Bovery, is an entertaining, smart film with strong performances.