GEMMA BOVERY is essentially a paean to the hotness of Gemma Arteton and to classic French literature. The plot sees the ordered village life of a former publisher, who semi-retired to became a baker in Normandy due to his love of Flaubert's "Madame Bovery" which is set there, turned upside down by the arrival of an English couple. She is beautiful and bored and her surname is Bovery. Soon her life begins to mirror the novel, as she seeks out affairs to deal with her ennui. Worried by this - because he knows the book ends with her suicide - the baker/publisher begins to try and discreetly guide her, with mixed results. Only the French could make something as insubstantial as this - and then make it work. Although billed as a comedy-drama, it's neither very funny nor entirely dramatically successful, but it sustains itself with a low- key middle class charm. Village life is gorgeously portrayed and most importantly the film succeeds in making you care about what is essentially a silly woman making bad decisions; like many French films it's all about the gloriousness of women, which Arteton more than lives up to. A small charmer.
Review of Gemma Bovery
