a romantic adaptation of Flaubert’s novel

This is a detail that says a lot. The new television adaptation of Flaubert’s literary work Madame Bovary, which will be broadcast on France 2 on December 13, is called Emma Bovary. The choice to attach the first name of the protagonist to the name of Bovary rather than the initial “Madame”, symbolizes the bias of the producers. This TV movie explores the heroine’s moods, breaking away from the very sharp realism of the 19th century writer. “We imagined a romantic film, in the original sense of the literary movement of the 19th century, which drew on human stories, both beautiful and tragic”, confient Marie Dupuy d’Angeac and Laurence Bachman, interviewed by Franceinfo.

The film is not yet rose water. The narrative thread chosen by the director Didier Bivel is the Flaubert trial in 1857. From its publication that year, the novel Madame Bovary is attacked by Ernest Pinard, prosecutor of the Second Empire, for contempt of public morality, good manners and religious morality. Throughout the story, the director builds a permanent round trip between the pleading and the adventures of Emma Bovary, played by the actress Camille Métayer. It is Thierry Godard who plays her husband, the doctor Charles Bovary. Grégory Fitoussi is Rodolphe Boulanger, Emma’s first lover, and the clerk Léon Dupuis, the second lover, is played by Julien de Saint-Jean.

Flaubert’s novel, deemed difficult to adapt to the screen, had already been the subject of many films, including that of Claude Chabrol in 1991. The producers wanted a different version. “We did not modernize the novel for the simple fact of modernizing it. We made this choice so that Madame Bovary would be more intelligible to the public”, explains Laurence Bachman.

The TV movie explores in depth, with less darkness than in the book, Emma’s boredom and her aspirations for a more exciting life. “There are always women who are bored in their marriage. Unhappy women who could not divorce. It concerned a whole generation and still concerns women today”, remarks Marie Dupuy d’Angeac. For his sidekick, the film is well anchored in the present with the question of the condition of women. “The social status of women is of course very different from Flaubert’s time for things like sexuality, but there are still inequalities as in the world of work”, slips Laurence Bachman.

Rereading a major literary work is always interesting to know the issues that shake a society. In 2021, the reluctance of the Second Empire on questions of morals seems very backward and remote. But if we dig a little deeper, women today who enter into several romantic or sexual relationships are still sometimes considered as “easy girls” in the eyes of some.

“We didn’t want it to be just a film from the past. We wanted Emma Bovary to be able to speak to all generations”, says Laurence Bachman. “We took a young actress (Camille Métayer) of the heroine’s age in the book. Her quest for absolute love speaks to all young girls. Generally speaking, young people are in search of the absolute. also chose a little-known actress among many others. We wanted the cast to speak to everyone “, complete Marie Dupuy d’Angeac.

On screen, the film by Didier Bivel is very accessible and quite short (1h42). The realistic universe of Flaubert is less respected than in the adaptation of Claude Chabrol (2h23), the plot is a little less detailed, but the narration is more rhythmic. In the canons of what is currently being done on streaming platforms. “Chabrol had done something more sociological. Our adaptation is more romantic”, believes Laurence Bachman.

Emma Bovary will be broadcast on December 13 at 9:05 p.m. on France 2.