The Age of Commercialism

Sorry, this movie sucks

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I normally LOVE period dramas, so I tend to give them a pass on many things, but this is just BORING. I can't like the actress in this role. She's painful to watch at times. There are parts of this movie that made me want to check to see if it had the least words of any movie made. Huge swathes of minutes passing with no words, just her poking at things and staring. I had to stop watching it. Great looking men though if that's all it takes for you.

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.

"Madame Bovary" was already transferred twice to the screen in its native country :Jean Renoir's version (1934) is generally considered the best ;the more recent version by Claude Chabrol who claimed he "made the movie Flaubert would have done" ;there's also Vincente Minnelli's film, starring the most beautiful romantic Emma ever in the shape of Jennifer Jones .Mrs Barthes took more liberties with the novel than any of her colleagues,sometimes not for the best: it's really a bad idea to replace the Marquis' ball by a hunting with hounds : a ball is par excellence the place where a woman can shine,dazzle all the men around and outstrip all her rivals:Flaubert's depiction of the soiree ,which is the turning point of the novel ,reveals Emma's monotonous living,her longing for a socialite life ,for a romantic love story her meek oafish hubby cannot give to her;the Marquis ,becoming Emma's lover , led the screenwriters to do without Rodolphe Boulanger ,which may disappoint the readers.Gone is Emma 's daughter -she wanted a boy and she found her ugly- who landed as a working girl in a spinning mill ,ironical fate for a daughter whose mom wanted to climb the social scale.On the other hand,Lheureux,Emma's evil genius, is given a (too) prominent role ,and Monsieur Homais ,the atheist chemist hardly appears ,he 's only in it to urge Charles to operate on Hippolyte,the person with club- foot ;the scene in the church with the vicar is much weaker than its equivalent in Renoir's movie;the agricultural meeting fete is botched ,and passes over in silence the way Flaubert showed "the poverty of the century " ,in the shape of a very old lady who is awarded a medal after a life of hard labor.(Renoir did not forget that either)The movie is not completely wretched though.Mia Wasikowska is a very credible Emma ,and even if her suicide may surprise Flaubert's readers,the final scene with these torches in the night is cinematographically dazzling(but the prologue which makes the movie a flashback is pointless);Charles Bovary(Henry Loyd-Hughes) is exactly how Flaubert depicted him,an unambitious good man with a small mind, whose main pleasure in life is to sit down at table and enjoy his meal;the wedding night -not shown in precedent versions- is revealing .To get a semblance of a luxury life,she's seized by a compulsive desire to buy mountain of things ,most of which are thoroughly useless.She lives in a world of illusion,even Leon (Ezra Miller)holds a second-rate position he may easily loose if he continues with his romance with a married woman.This new version will probably not go down in cinema history.But ,even though the screenplay is eminently debatable,the cinematography is splendid indeed.

Not expecting too much from this movie I was hoping to be surprised. Well I was. It was worse than I thought. Boring storyline, which has been done to death with these types of period pieces. There was no real point to any of it really. Just a few romps in the sack, with some passing fantasies of M Bovary, and that was it really. In the main she was the totally frustrated and bored housewife, but not quite as much as I was just watching. Scenery and cinematography wasn't even enough to lift the spirits. Throughout the film I was expecting a sudden change of pace or a dynamic twist to ramp up the whole affair, but somehow it just meandered along at such a sluggish pace, I openly admit I did nod off, much to my wife's annoyance. I would gladly give this movie. big fat zero, but have to settle for a 1/10. Dreadful.