Madame Bovary

Oh how very French! this is a 19th century period drama with a real romantic feel to it. It's perhaps not as smutty as I thought it may be - there are, inevitably, some scenes a bit like that but there's no excessively graphic sex scenes or anything like that (so if your looking for that, look elsewhere - its only rated PG for goodness sake). The dialogues intriguing and the performances are fairly solid for the most part. Of course its quite sentimental. Some may think its a little too cheesy.

The view of this adaptation as faithful but lifeless perhaps misses something: Huppert's Emma is less a hopelessly romantic girl greedily caught in her own fantasies than a sluttish woman who finds herself married to a man whose inadequately-sized balls drive her to desperation. To that extent, Chabrol succeeds in changing the issue from that of the justness or otherwise of her punishment to the near impossibility for a woman to adopt the shame of her desire without inviting tragic consequences.

Isabelle Huppert gives the ultimate performance of Emma Bovary. She is the main reason to watch this faithful and enjoyable dark adaptation of the novel.