MADAME BOVARY

Directed by: Didier Bivel (France, 2021)
Screenplay: Natalie Carter, Ève de Castro, based on "Ms Bovary", by Gustave Flaubert
Cast: Camille Métayer (Emma Bovary), Thierry Godard (Charles Bovary), Grégory Fitoussi (Rodolphe), Laurent Stocker (Pinard), Dominique Pinon (Homais), Alexandre Brasseur (Senard), Alexandre Blazy (Flaubert)
Genre: drama
Parental guidance: TV-PG

INTERVIEW WITH MARIE DUPUY D’ANGEAC, THE FILM’S COPRODUCER

What is Madame Bovary?

Madame Bovary is a monument of French literature which has enjoyed an incredible posterity. The term bovaryisme has even entered the French language, describing the aspiration to live a life different to one’s own. As for Emma, she is a woman, a rebel. Her story takes place in Normandy, Gustave Flaubert’s native region, during the 1940s. Hers is a tragic destiny inspired by true events, one of a young woman married to Charles, a man she does not love. She dreams of Paris, of a bright future, yet remains in Yonville. Her husband refuses her any physical affection and so she finds it in the arms of Rodolphe, a predator who leaves her for someone else, acting as the catalyst of her downfall. She eventually brings about her own ruinous end and that of her marriage, committing suicide by swallowing arsenic. I call her a rebel, because she is the only character throughout the novel to choose her own fate. She takes responsibility for herself, burns out, and lives life without compromise. She is much more than a bored, bourgeois woman; she lights up her village with her beauty and her misadventures. We study this book in France, but often too young, and so are unable to appreciate its style and its historical context. Madame Bovary has become synonymous with boredom and frivolity. Yet with a little more life and experience, the story will move and haunt you.

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Why did you call your film Emma Bovary and not Madame Bovary?

“Madame Bovary” could be Charles’ mother, or his first wife – a sour-tempered woman who died before he met Emma. We wanted to give Emma her name back to show that she is in control of her destiny. How did you choose the actress who plays Emma? The strength of our project was rooted in finding an actress as old as Emma was, as we really wanted to paint the portrait of a very young woman. Camille Métayer, just 23, truly immersed us in the context and the setting.

The book has been adapted many times for television and cinema. What did you want to add?

We wanted to revisit the image that this book presents of women in the wake of #MeToo and recent debates on feminism. The case brought against Flaubert for “contempt of religious morals and common decency” immediately became our angle. The prosecutor, Mr. Pinard, who later became the minister of the interior and also sued Baudelaire for Les Fleurs du Mal, is a very interesting character. In his eyes, women were supposed to stay at home, submit to their husbands, and just accept their fates. We took the liberty of making Flaubert a sentimental man and inviting suffragettes into the courtroom. We also had them talk about the “female condition,” although the term did not exist at the time.

While previous adaptations have been a faithful rendition of the book, we decided to shift between the novel and the trial in order to meet Emma at different moments in her life, accelerating certain events, and bringing viewers closer to her. We wanted to depict a woman who was more complex than she usually appears.

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You also decided to portray her husband, Charles, in a new light. Can you explain why?

All the love we have for Emma is reflected through her husband’s impossible love for her. He is powerless when it comes to loving her, satisfying her, and making her happy, and seems confused that he is married to such a young, beautiful woman. And yet he starts and ends the novel. He dies of a broken heart after discovering his wife’s affairs, having done his utmost not to see them. He is, after all, the novel’s most romantic character and much like the hero in the romance novels that Emma used to read in secret.

“Emma Bovary is the one being judged, and the entire female condition through her,” declared an attorney during the trial. What aspects of this era did you want to show?

In the 19th century, women in France could be mothers, daughters, or wives. They were always reduced to their marital status, and swapped their father’s name for their husband’s. This is why Flaubert’s novel was so frightening. At the time, it was indecent to claim that a woman could prefer her lover to her partner, and that a provincial little bourgeois girl could take pleasure in sex when her job was to raise her children and take care of the home. Today, we think that it is normal to have a bank account, to be able to divorce, take the pill, or get an abortion. But these changes did not happen until the second half of the 20th century. I therefore wanted to take a trip back into the 19th century and show how terrible it was for women. If Charles had killed Emma, she would have been accused of driving him to commit murder!