Fontaine returns to France for her adaptation of Posy Simmonds’ novel of French-speaking Brits abroad. At its core, it’s a humdrum comedy about men’s fascination with beautiful women, but blessed with a deliciously asinine performance from Luchini as the curtain-twitching neighbour who insists on turning Gemma (Arterton) and her extramarital relations into Gustave Flaubert’s fictional philanderer Emma Bovary – and turns a small town baker with an over-baked literary imagination into a hero. Once again, it seems, “Gemma Bovery, c’est moi.”
Gemma Bovery | Anne Fontaine, (France 2014) with Gemma Arterton, Fabrice Luchini, Jason Flemyng.
Originally published in issue #130, September 2014.