GEMMA BOVERY

Posy Simmonds is well known British cartoonist known for re-intrepreting classic literature in a modern setting in serial comic strips.  Her TAMARA DREWE, a version of Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd,  was adapted as a film in 2010 by Stephen Frears with mixed results. On the whole, I much preferred this Franco-English adaptation of Simmonds GEMMA BOVERY.  In this version of Flaubert's iconic tale of middle class married boredom, tragic love and debt, the heroine is played by Gemma Arterton (who also played Tamara Drewe).  Mrs Bovery has moved to a small town in northern France to live with her husband (Jason Flemyng), a humble decorator.  However, it soon becomes apparent that she has tastes of something grander and more sensuous.  She buys things that she can't afford on a whim, and there are hints of previous, richer lovers.  For no other reason than just to see what it's like, she cheats on her husband with the local nobleman, a rather pale imitation of the novel's Rodolphe.  

All this is observed by the town's baker, Martin Joubert (Fabrice Lucine - POTICHE).  He's a man obsessed with Flaubert's novel, attracted to Gemma, and almost willing her to re-enact the story, although not of course its ending.  The result is a wonderful performance of wry tragicomedy that sets the tone for this charming and sometimes deeply moving film.  I also love the wry social commentary that Simmonds is famous for. In this case, it's embodied in the Franco-English couple Rankin (Pip Torrens) and Wizzy (Elsa Zylberstein) - Notting Hill yuppies with a lavish second home in France. The movie perfectly satirises their social climbing and insecurity. The problem is the inevitable clash of tone, which director Anne Fontaine doesn't handle well, especially in the final act of the film. Maybe no-one could and the ultimate fault lies with Simmonds for shoe-horning in that ending....Either way this remains a charming and occasionally very clever movie, if flawed.

GEMMA BOVERY has a running time of 99 minutes and is rated R.  The movie played Toronto 2014 and was released last year in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Greece and Portugal. It was released earlier this year in Italy, Estonia, Hungary, Norway, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Turkey and Brazil. It is currently on release in the UK and Ireland.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 7 - IN THE HOUSE

DANS LA MAISON is a slippery, subversive, wonderfully dry film from writer-director Francois Ozon.  After the high camp of POTICHE he creates a movie that is all about formal control, sly black humour and uncomfortably inappropriate behaviour.  Fabrice Luchini stars as M.Germain, a high school teacher contemptuous of his pupils imbecility and drawn to the one boy, Claude (Ernst Umhauer) who shows a whisper of talent.  M. Germain tells himself that he is nurturing a future writer, but really he's egging Claude on out of prurient interest - fascinating by the boys voyeuristic essays about how he has insinuated himself into the household of his classmate Raphael, and formed a crush on Raphael's bored bourgeoise housewife (Emmanuelle Seigner).  The teacher-pupil relationship starts as silly but as M. and Mme Germain and we, the audience, become more involved in Claude's fiction, and less able to draw the boundary between what is actually happening, and what he is fantasising about.  Is this boy just precocious, lonely and trying to escape his sad home life, or is he genuinely sinister?  Does he deserve our pity, or should we be wary of him? Is he playing with us?  Eric Altmeyer's performance is so nuanced we'll never quite know.  The journey into ambiguity is, however, great fun, and for much of the film we share Ozon's satire on the banality of middle-class life, and the absurd pretentiousness of modern art.  However, in the final scene, the tables are turned.  Is Ozon warning us, the avid cinemagoers, of becoming too obsessed with cinema?  Is he mocking us, or sharing our obsession?  Either way, this is a movie that make us laugh but also provokes and subverts. Superb!

IN THE HOUSE  played Toronto, where it wont the FIPRESCI prize, and London 2012 and is currently on release in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Russia. It opens in Germany on Nov 29 and in the UK on March 29th 2013. The running time is 105 minutes. 

MOLIERE In Love? Don't flatter yourself.

Writer-directer Laurent Tirard delivers a tedious, witless costume drama, marketed in the UK as Molière In Love. It is an unfortunate comparison to make. I am no fan of the lead performances in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE but you simply have to admire its energy, beautiful production design and witty, intelligent, multi-faceted script. MOLIERE is rather thin gruel by comparison.

The immensely talented Romain Duris plays the impecunious playwright-actor. He is recruited by a wealthy social climber called M. Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini) to help him woo the imperious Marquise Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier). In order to keep this liason secret from Madame Jourdaine (Laura Morante), Molière adopts the role of a pious priest named Tartuffe. Molière and Madame Jourdain begin an affair and also try to protect Mlle. Jourdain from a loveless marriage to the son of a scheming bankrupt Marquis (Edouard Baer).

Those who know Molière's plays will see embryonic characters and scenes played out and take some delight in the fictional "what ifs?" And there is a lot of fun to be had watching Edouard Baer and Fabrice Luchini play the roles of nincompoop social climber and lecherous Marquis. It is, while attenuated by a flabby script, the germinal joy of watching Molière's plays!

Everything else is a bit of a disappointment. The production is lavish but has none of the grit, grime and attention to detail seen in BBC productions. Where are Shakespeare's inky fingers? And could they not have produced a more convincing wig for Romain Duris? The pacing is way off. The first hour of the movie could be radically condensed for a start. There is no social or political context - the stuff that distracted from the saccharine in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Admittedly, the action takes place in a country estate rather than in a bustling capital city so there is less opportunity to show wider society. Still, one suspects a writer of Stoppard's talent would have made more of the pedestrian surroundings. And as for the final scene, presumably it was meant to cause violent emotion in the viewer. I found it hackneyed.

MOLIERE was released earlier this year in Belgium, France, Greece, Israel and Lithuania. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in Hungary, Russia and the US on July 26th. It opens in the Netherlands and Argentina in August and in Australia on Boxing Day 2007.