Madame Bovary

Oops! Shakycam even when the camera isn’t moving?

Now we got real shakycam!

*phew* Shakycam gone — I guess they were using it to be all dramatic and stuff.

It’s not that I have something in principle against using shakycam — I just get physically nauseated and have to stop watching if it’s too excessive.

Oh, yeah, I got this movie because I rather liked Cold Souls (by the same director). This looks extremely different, though.

Hm… she didn’t get to direct a movie for a decade after this one, so I’m guessing it didn’t set the box office on fire?

Indeed.

And… I kinda see now why. The protagonist is bored, so it’s necessary to show her being bored, and that’s er you’re not going to believe this quite boring.

Her husband is a doctor, and he has patients with disgusting conditions, and we get to see them, too.

I.e., the ultimate date movie.

Finally! The love interest!

Oh! It is The Flash! They’re very young here.

Oh deer. This feels so… I bet when she starts to have affairs she finally gets a new frock, because that frock symbolises being all staid and corseted up and stuff. That is, this movie feels like if the director has mapped out a couple of symbols (corsets and cobwebs) and is existing on them to a degree that feels frankly risible.

It’s just tedious.

Oh, The Flash wasn’t the love interest — this guy is.

Scarlet woman!

Well, more orange, I guess.

Brutal.

It’s been years since I’ve seen a Madame Bovary adaptation — there’s like a dozen of them? — but I seem to remember the character having more… vigour? She’s so passive here that whenever she actually does something (like buying new curtains), it’s almost shocking.

I haven’t read the novel, though.

Hey! It’s Paul Giamatti!

*gasp*

This is like… first she’s dull, and then she grows more and more unpleasant, seemingly at random. It’s an extraordinarily unsympathetic figure to carry a movie. It seems like the director is saying “that Bovary bird? she’s well ‘orrible”. (I’m not sure why the director turned cockney in this scenario, but she somehow did.)