In the film’s early scenes, we see her as a young woman at finishing school, learning proper posture, picking apples, etc. Unlike Flaubert’s novel - and also unlike Fontaine’s recent updating - Barthes’s film sticks almost religiously to Emma’s (Mia Wasikowska) point of view. Barthes and her co-writer Felipe Marino feel this Emma Bovary - and they make sure we do, too.

At least for its first half, this is a textured, haunted, remarkably empathetic film. shores this month, hot on the heels of Anne Fontaine’s well-acted, but ultimately thin modernization Gemma Bovery, maybe adds to the been-there, done-that quality.) But look closely and you may see that this madame is alive in all sorts of ways. (That this is the second Madame Bovary adaptation to open on U.S. On its surface, Sophie Barthes’s film of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary comes at us like a musty blast of Quality - what the French New Wave critics once called “ le cinema du papa.” An immaculate period adaptation seemingly lacking any ironic distance or newfangled reinvention, this feels at first like the kind of Bovary you can lose yourself in - all petticoats and proprieties.

Instaling Madame Bovary