Gemma Bovery
Starring Gemma Arterton, Fabrice Luchini
Directed by Anne Fontaine
Life imitates art in the latest effort from Coco Before Chanel director Anne Fontaine. Alas, the film itself never comes to life, simply going through motions that were established over 150 years ago.
Having abandoned Paris for the tranquility of rural Normandy, sexagenarian Martin (Fabrice Luchini) finds his idyll disrupted by the arrival of new English neighbours: Charlie (Jason Flemyng) and Gemma Bovery (Gemma Arterton). And while many men might fixate solely on Arterton’s physical attributes, Martin intersperses his leering with observations about how Gemma’s life eerily mirrors Emma Bovary’s fictional reality. In short order, he’s creepily tailing her as she sneaks away for liaisons with an Adonis-like neighbour (Niels Schneider).
In Martin’s estimation, Flaubert’s classic text is “a mundane story told by a genius.” It was also an exercise in precision. Conversely, Fontaine’s languid film is saddled with a burdensome flashback framing device, sapped of any melancholy by its coffee shop folk soundtrack and prone to strained attempts at comedy. To wit, a sequence in which Martin must suck venom from Gemma’s hard-to-reach bee sting is about as ribald as a Three’s Company rerun.
While Arterton makes a convincing object of desire, she’s unable to bring much depth to a character frequently stripped of as much agency as clothing. Even her ennui isn’t particularly palpable, leaving viewers with little to invest themselves in. Ultimately, the scenes that arouse the most sympathy are those that find Martin rolling his eyes at his neighbours’ inane blathering. As he shifts anxiously, desperate for anything of consequence to be broached, we understand precisely how he feels.
