Martin Joubert (Fabrice Luchini) is a middle-aged married baker with a penchant for the writings of Gustave Flaubert. Imagine his delight when a young English couple named Charles and Gemma Bovery (Jason Flemyng and Gemma Arterton) move in next door. An intrigued Martin watches on as the bored young bride embarks on an extramarital affair with a trust fund scoundrel. Martin dutifully warns her away from arsenic. And so on.
A less-than-intrigued Mme Joubert rolls her eyes as her husband makes notes of the thunderingly obvious similarities between saucy Gemma next door and her literary equivalent.
Directed by Anne Fontaine and based on the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds, Gemma Bovery (on paper at least) promises a new feminist twist on the doomed heroine. Sure enough, the narrative offers a few clever departures from Flaubert's original trajectory, although these fall disappointingly short of a radical overhaul. If anything, the title character is consistently trivialised by this contemporary treatment: Madame Bovary was a tragic housewife; Gemma is rather more Desperate Housewife.
The rest is as insubstantial as a few nibbled hazelnuts: Fontaine's postcard-pretty treatment of the Normandy landscape recalls A Year in Provence, while they seaside-postcard-pretty sex scenes make one think: "Carry On, Flaubert." It won't inspire anyone to reread the book, but it might earn Benny Hill a few extra hits on YouTube.
A heavily eroticised Arterton enlivens the lumpy Franglais dialogue and Luchini wrings laughs from the unlovely vantage of voyeuristic saddo. But that’s not enough to hold the film together, or, indeed, the viewer’s interest.
