Vihren Mitev It is a high valuation for this movie but I give it because of the novel of Gustave Flaubert. From now on I am talking about the novel and the parts which one can see in the movie or about their cross-points.The rise of the street business, cafeterias, agents, notary, private spaces and thoughts, secrets and frauds, modernization, science, fragmentary ethics and the fall of moral, religion, the ordinary, trivial, village life. If you want. The point from where Socrates and Voltaire felt their power of being free and their weakness of losing their goal. So, the fall of the fundamental and traditional. The question and now what? And the answer - where I am at this moment.In conclusion, if you do not want to read the book - then watch the movie.http://vihrenmitevmovies.blogspot.com/

gridoon2018 At first glance, "Madame Bovary" may seem like an atypical project for Claude Chabrol: a costume drama with no murders at all (though there are a couple of deaths, plus an amputation!). But if you look closer, you can see that the meticulous production, the elegant camera work, the morally complex characters, the extramarital affairs, the methodically (and at times excessively) slow pacing, they are all characteristically Chabrolian. This film is not just based on a book, it feels like a book on the screen, with its linear, one-thing-after-the-other structure and the (unidentified) narrator commenting on the action from time to time. The exquisitely beautiful Isabelle Huppert gives us an intelligent take on the title character; the rest of the cast is fine. Not exactly an exciting movie, but a worthwhile and beautifully made one. **1/2 out of 4.

William J. Fickling I am usually the most avid of Chabrol fans, but with Madame Bovary he finally made a real turkey. This film is dull dull dull. I probably could have abided the tediousness and the fastidious faithfulness to the book if the film had a lead actress who was even remotely credible in the lead. But Huppert is woefully miscast as Emma. Emma Bovary is supposed to be a passionate woman who recklessly throws herself into adulterous affairs. Huppert plays Emma as an ice princess, about as passionate as a bowl of oatmeal! Huppert achieves the astonishing feat of maintaining the same facial expression throughout the film; at times I wondered if her facial muscles were paralyzed. This would have been a perfect role for Isabel Adjani...too bad. Read the book instead.6/10

Sleepy-17 Isabelle Huppert plays the part very coldly, which makes the story more distant. She seems to view romantic sexual pleasure as something to be acquired instead of experienced. The medical scenes, however, are very well done and almost shocking in the staid context of the film's sensationless depiction of marital infidelity. Other Bovarys (Jennifer Jones and Frances O'Connor) have been much more sensual, whereas Isabel is pretty but it never seems that having sexual intercourse with her would be fun. Sorry to put it so crudely, but I always thought that sexual attraction was the point of the story, and also the source of its tragedy.