Director: Sophie Barthes
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.5
Emma Bovary (Mia Wasikowska), married to "country doctor" Charles (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), becomes disillusioned with 'simple' living (away from a 'big city'), so her dreams of opulence and "extraordinary experiences" lead her to having affairs (with Logan Marshall-Green and Ezra Miller) and accruing a massive bill from salesman Lheureux (a smirking Rhys Ifans). The screenplay reduces Dr. Charles to an inconsequential component - unlike the source novel by Gustave Flaubert - and focuses mainly on the title figure as she betrays her husband (repeatedly) and accrues ridiculous debt (that neither she nor the doctor can pay off): her downfall is imminent from the beginning, and when she finally drinks poison and dies, it's less of a tragedy and more of a case of an egotistical woman receiving her comeuppance (in modern terms, can't have a champagne taste on a cheap beer budget). I originally figured this would be a feminist rethink by director Barthes, but it's essentially the same old story about vanity and egocentricism ruining lives (except without Flaubert's gift for prose).
