Pretty Good

People are voting emotionally.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In the effort to show the protagonist's boredom I believe the director tried to bore the viewer to death. I found myself looking at the time and trying to ascertain how long did I have left to watch. I do not think this movie captured the character of themes of Madame Bovary. The casting was horrible the actors were either too youthful or just horrible for the roles they were portraying.

For the first 15 minutes of this latest film version of Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", I thought it was a misfire. But that slow start leads to a beautiful and affecting movie.Anyone who knows Vincente Minnelli's version with Jennifer Jones will be surprised at how different this one feels.Emma Bovary (Mia Wasikowska) goes from a convent school into a marriage arranged by her father. She marries novice doctor Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) who takes up a practice in a French provincial town. However Emma has a romantic imagination inspired by novels; she aspires to beautiful things and a life of elegance and style. She is encouraged in this by unscrupulous merchants who extend her credit. She is also seduced into a number of affairs in a vain search for true romance.Now this is tricky stuff to build a movie around and still retain sympathy for Emma whose actions otherwise seem self indulgent and hedonistic.Minnelli's version used narration based on Flaubert's text and we learn from the beginning that Emma was driven by an unattainable romantic vision. In this version, directed by Sophie Barthes, there is no narration, we must catch the story as it unfolds. For anyone who knows nothing of the story, it may seem at first to be an exposé of predatory credit practices in 1850's France. But as Emma is drawn into extramarital affairs, we sense the looming tragedy; she is naive and seduced by notions of romance that cannot be fulfilled and all the men in her life take advantage of her.This film is beautifully made. It has a more authentic look than the B/W Minnelli version, which was shot on the MGM backlot. However that version's detachment from reality added to its charm. Even the scores for the two films mark the differences; a lush, powerful work for Minnelli; a subtle one for Barthes. The character of Charles is also treated more sympathetically in the earlier version; here he seems a bit of a jerk.However the success of "Madame Bovary" comes down to Emma. Mia Wasikowska is a quieter beauty than Jennifer Jones who had a sensuousness that leapt from the screen. Wasikowska's Emma slips under your guard, she has a fragile quality and the problems of debt and infidelity develop at a slower pace. Eventually she seems more a victim of other people's shortcomings than her own. The two versions are so different that they can be enjoyed on their own terms. However some of the criticism of this version seems harsh. It unfolds at a measured pace, but I think it will become more appreciated over time.

I loved the novel and was looking forward to the movie. Stopped watching when I first saw Leon. This actor is too young for that role. The color of his voice, his laughter, the look on his face, the overall expression - he looks 18. That ruined the movie for me. What on Earth were they thinking?! Emma would never fall for a guy like that.Oh, talking about Emma... Seriously? Mia Wasikowska? The same way I think they made a mistake with choosing Keira Knightley for Anna Karenina, I think she would have been much better choice for Emma, in this case.OK, enough of bad criticism now. This movie looks expensive and very endearing for the eyes. Both, the costumes and the scenery look realistic. I would imagine XIX century France like this.

Mia Wasikowska in this new, atmospheric film adaptation of "Madame Bovary" (a revolutionary classic) makes a fascinating, sensitive, and convincing Emma; one that resembles not so much previous Bovary's from previous films, but actually the complicated, twenty-something, anti- heroine of the novel, which I've long loved. To me she captures a lot of the paradoxes and ambiguous aspects of Emma, and manages to create empathy while making so many foolish, self-destructive choices. I've watched the film twice, and by the second viewing I got past the differences from the book (I know all the dialogue and scenes) and the gradual pace of the film, and got into the stillness that builds to the emotional release. I haven't really felt any movie has come close to capturing the book (which may be an impossible feat) but this one has it's own poetic perspective, mystique and beauty (without the irony of the novel) and Mia's portrayal has the enigmatic, haunting qualities that have made me a Bovary addict.Scenes of Emma running ornately clad through cow pastures vividly show her stranger-in-a-strange-land status (a peacock surrounded by peasantry). There were many references to her conflicted relationship to nature, including the hunt with the Marquis that I thought worked well, showing her, after the killing of the stag, seeking some power equal to men - in her case, she expressed it in her sexuality (through adultery), and conspicuous consumption; of course, this didn't work out too well. I think that in both the book and this film, Emma is seeking some measure of power, and of course love, but in a very unconscious way. The final, climactic scene was movingly done; it felt real to me. This version of "Madame Bovary" is quite haunting, with a sad beauty of its own.The cinematography and the costumes are simply gorgeous, but they're more than eye-candy, they are integrally connected to the emotional changes in Emma and the times in which she lived.