Madame Bovary *** (1991, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-François Balmer, Christophe Malavoy) – Classic Movie Review 7344

The ideally cast Isabelle Huppert and Jean-François Balmer are splendid in Claude Chabrol’s lavish, handsome and well-played but dry, chilly, dark and depressing French 1991 film production of Gustave Flaubert’s much re-told story of how Emma Bovary (Huppert) is stifled after she marries boring Normandy doctor Charles Bovary (Balmer), romances handsome, ne’er-do-well Rodolphe Boulanger (Christophe Malavoy), has other affairs and starts a fall that leads to her penury, disgrace, humiliation and suicide.

Great though the acting, photography (Jean Rabier) and production (set designs by Michèle Abbé-Vannier, costume designs by Corinne Jorry) are, even Chabrol – perhaps being too respectful to the original – cannot help the heavy-handed weight of a literary adaptation falling like an albatross over the movie.

With all the painstaking, careful work, you want to like it more than you end up doing, and sometimes, at this length (143 minutes), it occasionally seems tedious and sleep-inducing. And that is shame when there are so many special ingredients to admire here. Not least among them are Corinne Jorry’s costume designs, which were nominated for an Oscar.

Also in the cast are Jeanne Yanne, Lucas Belvauz, Thomas Chabrol, Christiane Minazzoli, Jean-Louis Maury, Florent Gibassier, Jean-Claude Bouillaud, Sabeline Campo, Yves Verhoeven, Marie Mergey, François Maistre, Henri Attal, Gilette Barbier, Dominique Clément, Etienne Draber, Pierre-François Dumeniaud, Michel Dupuy, Christine Paolini, Andrée Thorent.

Madame Bovary is directed by Claude Chabrol, runs 143 minutes, is made by CED, France 3 and MK2, is released by Samuel Goldwyn Company, is written by Claude Chabrol, is shot by Jean Rabier, is produced by Marin Karmitz, is scored by Matthieu Chabrol and Maurice Coignard and is designed by Michèle Abbé-Vannier.

There is a famous Hollywood version of the story in 1949, Madame Bovary (1949) with Jennifer Jones, and a new film version appeared in 2014, Madame Bovary (2014). Other versions include: Jean Renoir’s Madame Bovary (1934) and Madame Bovary (1937) with Pola Negri.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7344

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