Madame Bovary

Claude Chabrol’s faithful adaptation of Gustav Flaubert’s classic novel stars Isabelle Huppert as the eponymous heroine.

In 19th century Normandy, the young Emma’s dreams of marriage are initially fulfilled following her betrothal to Charles Bovary, the doctor who cured her father. However, she soon finds herself suffocating with boredom of her provincial existence and embarks on a series of desperate affairs, in the quest to find love and true feeling in her life.

Although a seeming departure from his preferred thriller genre, Chabrol’s recourse to Flaubert’s masterpiece (which had previously been brought to screen by Jean Renoir and Vincente Minelli among many others) is a logical step for the former Nouvelle Vague director. Flaubert’s provincial setting and exposé of the bourgeoisie in all its hypocritical glory is meat and potatoes for France’s master of suspense, who came to realise early in his career that the most thrilling stories start at home.

Despite a gap of over a hundred years, many of the codes of conduct and masochistic tendencies in Flaubert’s world remain embedded within Chabrol’s personal and cinematic milieu. Consequently, the director’s attention to period detail and the language of the novel is meticulous, as he gives a new visual life to one of the greatest tragedies ever written.

The ongoing and fructuous partnership between Chabrol and Isabelle Huppert reaches a kind of pinnacle with this film. Arguably the greatest French actress of the last thirty years, with a breath-taking cinematic and theatrical career to date, Huppert was destined to play this giant character of French literature. The director and star’s first two collaborations before this film, Violette Nozière and Une Affaire de femmes (the latter also playing on Cinémoi as part of the Chabrol season), are historical pieces about an audacious, rule-breaking female protagonist, who is cruelly judged by society. It as if they were building up to their assuredly directed and immaculately performed Madame Bovary.