It is difficult to fathom why a new film of Madame Bovary needed to be made now, in 2015, but it’s even harder to connect it to the woman behind the camera; though Sophie Barthes competently steers this lavish, gorgeously designed production to the middle of the road, it hardly seems like the work of the same director as 2009’s Cold Souls, an amusing but overly derivative existential comedy starring Paul Giamatti. Perhaps given more time, a broader directorial sensibility will emerge, but at the moment, Barthes’ only trademark is casting Giamatti—though, because this fine actor rarely gets roles worthy of his talent, that’s almost enough to justify her career so far.
Mia Wasikowska plays Emma Bovary, the dissatisfied wife of a country doctor, Charles (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), in early 19th Century France. The film glosses over Emma’s stint in a convent, which in the novel is key to understanding why she marries Charles in the first place, and instead moves straight into their unhappy marriage and Emma’s dalliances with a legal clerk (Ezra Miller) and a marquis (Logan Marshall-Green). Giamatti plays Homais, a pharmacist who encourages Charles to undertake a risky surgical procedure for the sake of his status; Rhys Ifans plays Lheureux, a merchant who entices Emma with fine goods redolent of the luxurious lifestyle for which she longs, then turns the screws on her when her debt piles up.
As expected, Barthes’ take on Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece conflates characters, streamlines the plot and reworks the diegetic chronology; but while most literary adaptations do this to some degree, many of the choices here render the story much less compelling. Flaubert’s genius lies in his ability to evoke for the reader conflicting feelings about his characters. One way he achieves this is via extended or momentary shifts in point of view, which would be hard to preserve onscreen. Yet Barthes’ very conception of Charles Bovary misses the mark. In the novel he’s hapless and boring, but absolutely devoted to Emma. He dotes on her endlessly, and she despises him for his weakness and lack of higher aspirations. This film goes a much less interesting way with the character—as portrayed by Lloyd-Hughes, Charles is earnest and, in his relationship with Emma, distant, which saps much of the nuanced conflict from their relationship.
Most damningly, the film is so staid in its pacing and tepid in tone that the full force of Emma’s longing never comes across. Emma Bovary, a character defined by passion, is carried away by her romantic fantasies—but here, she mostly just seems bored, even when she’s doing what she wants. Part of the problem is the limited extent to which a character’s inner life can be conveyed without a narrator to dip into her consciousness; but the bigger issue is that the reworked story undercuts the significance of several major events. In the novel, Charles’s botched surgery on a clubfoot destroys his reputation just as Emma begins to consider renewing her devotion to him. Barthes shows so little interest in Charles as a character, or in exploring the complications of his and Emma’s relationship, that this portion of the film, if excised entirely, would hardly be noticed.
Lacking an original, or even a faithful take on the novel, Madame Bovary repeatedly gives rise to the question: Why bother?