THE heroines of classic novels about women who play away from marriage meet their fates in many ways.  Gustave Flaubert’s Emma Bovary and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina both suicide.

Novelist Posy Simmonds picks the eyes out of Flaubert’s novel in re-birthing Mme Bovary into the 21st century.  Her novel’s narrator becomes Flaubert fan Martin (Fabrice Luchini) who after a career editing PhD theses for publication has retired to make a new career as a craft baker in the Normandy village where Flaubert wrote the novel.  British newly-weds, antique restorer Charlie (Jason Flemyng) and painter Gemma Bovery (Gemma Arterton) move into the house across the road.  Martin is a modern Greek Chorus who, having endured a sexual drought for several years, becomes enraptured by Gemma.

Gemma takes lovers – student Herve, wealthy Julien and former lover Patrick.  In observing her bedroom frolics, the film strongly suggests that for her, sex is a power weapon rather than a sensual delight.  Poor girl.  It won’t be the direct death of her, but neither will the rat poison she buys against Martin’s advice (readers of Flaubert’s novel will recognise the connection).

Director Anne Fontaine has a fine eye for environments and characterisations.  Good subtitles enhance the bi-lingual dialogue.  I couldn’t resist a guffaw at the Anglicisation of “ta gueule” which caused the film no difficulty but might distress the editor if I asked him to publish it.

Should you see “Gemma Bovery”?  Why not? Gemma Arterton makes a hearty meal of a woman whose body has enmeshed her in a situation that her intellect is unable to manage.  It’s an agreeably complex and engaging dramatisation of a novel first published in 1856 and still in bookshops.

At Palace Electric