Gemma Bovery. Directed by Anne Fontaine. Starring Gemma Arterton and Fabrice Luchini. In French with English subtitles. Now showing at Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas.
Rating: 7 (out of 10)
Brit newcomer Gemma Arterton (Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace) is the perfect foil for veteran French actor Fabrice Luchini in Anne Fontaine's thoroughly entertaining romantic comedy Gemma Bovery.
Arterton makes up one half of a British couple (with Jason Flemyng as Charlie) who move from London to Normandy in the French countryside "where the art of living is taken seriously."
After meeting them on the day they arrive their neighbour, baker Martin Joubert (Luchini), can't believe his luck. The similarities between the English Boverys and Flaubert's Madame Bovary capture his imagination. At the dinner table Joubert asks his wife and teenage son incredulously, "Guess their name?" Son: "Sherlock Holmes? James Bond? McDonalds?" Father: "Bovery. His name is Charles. Hers is Gemma. Isn't that wild? Here in Normandy where Flaubert wrote his masterpiece." Son: "The movie sucked."
Adapted for the screen by Fontaine with longtime Jacques Rivette collaborator Pascal Bonitzer Gemma Bovery moves along with a Mozartian lightness playing off English/French stereotypes throughout. The script rarely goes for overt laughs, but Luchini like a modern-day Buster Keaton, is always pulling the story in that direction.
