For a book that's often referred to as one of the all-time great unfilmable novels, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary has a long and storied history on the screen. It's been adapted for the cinema no less than six times, and an additional five adaptations for the small screen. The most well-received version, however, is Claude Chabrol's 1991 adapatation. It was widely praised at the Moscow International Film Festival when it debuted; it got Chabrol his first-ever Golden Globe nomination; and it was especially beloved in France — and who better to judge the success of an adaptation of one of France's greatest novels by one of France's greatest filmmakers than the French? Then again, there's always the counter-example of Jerry Lewis to argue against their taste as a nation. It's understandable why so many moviemakers have been drawn to the story of Emma Bovary; she's one of the most fully fleshed-out characters in all of fiction, entirely believable and completely three-dimensional. Her flaws run as deep as any character in modern literature, and her personality is as recognizable today as it was when the book was published in 1857. However, it's also understandable why so many adaptations of the book go astray; Flaubert's greatest strength as a writer was not his ability to draw deep and true psychological portraits — though that was an ability of his rivaled perhaps only by Dostoevski, his true power lay in his ability to realize those portraits in cool, elegant prose unparalleled by his peers. Due to the essential difference between the media of film and literature, much of that prose, and the incomparably refined descriptions and turns of phrase that made Flaubert's work so compelling, are inevitably lost in a filmed retelling. But in Claude Chabrol, Madame Bovary found perhaps the one director who truly shared the novelist's style and sensibility. Did he deliver a film worthy of the novel? Or was it just another misstep?
WHAT IT HAD: That rarest of things, a director sympatico with the novelist. Claude Chabrol is a holdover from the first sparks of the French New Wave, but he's developed into a filmmaker with a very unique style and signature. He's often called the French Hitchcock, a lazy shorthand that's unfair to both men — his early suspense films have given way to extremely deep and adept dramas later in life. He's also exceptionally skilled at portraying female characters, especially ones who are sympathetic despite very profound moral flaws, a perfect description of Emma Bovary. The set and costume design in the adaptation are flawless (Corinne Jorry was nominated for an Oscar for the latter), and Isabelle Huppert plays the role to chilly perfection. Her performances suggests depths that the novel reveals in full.
WHAT IT LACKED: It takes an actress of Huppert's skill to suggest those depths, and not everyone in Chabrol's Madame Bovary has that level of skill. Jean Yanne, in particular, isn't quite up to the demanding task of playing M. Homais, and other members of the supporting cast attempt to suggest with noise what Huppert conjures with silence. Elsewhere, silence works against the movie: since Chabrol cannot tell, he must show, and at times, this is tremendously effective, but at other times it can slow the movie to a tedious crawl. Where Flaubert can stun with perfect description and narrative, Chabrol must hope that the image alone can overwhelm until the next progress of plot. This gambit (which, to be fair, is no fault of Chabrol's) succeeds when Huppert is front and center and fails when she's not.
DID IT SUCCEED?: For the most part, yes — albeit for entirely different reasons than the book succeeded. Madame Bovary is a pretty perfect example of why great novels are extremely difficult to transfer to great films, but Chabrol manages to make at least a very good film by sidestepping most of the requirements for making a straight-up adaptation of the book. Where the film doesn't work, it's because it is simply impossible to convey some of the complex ideas in Flaubert's prose through the medium of film, and where it succeeds, it succeeds because of his skill as a filmmaker. Chabrol's Madame Bovary plays far more to his strengths than to Flaubert's, but where the two interweave — specifically in the portrayal of strong, difficult, women morally uprooted by circumstance — the overlap makes for a fine film.
