Gemma Arterton is ideally cast as the alluring heroine of the wry Anglo-French comedy-drama Gemma Bovery — this is the second time she has taken the lead in an adaptation of a Posy Simmonds’ comic book.
2010 film Tamara Drewe found her playing an updated version of the heroine of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd. This time she’s a modern-day incarnation of Gustave Flaubert’s 19th-century provincial wife Madame Bovary.
That at least is what Fabrice Lucchini’s fretful local baker decides when Arterton’s English ex-pat and her husband (Jason Flemyng) move in opposite his Normandy home. Mutely besotted with his luscious new neighbor, he can’t help viewing her subsequent romantic entanglements through the prism of Flaubert’s fiction.
Director Anne Fontaine’s film isn’t as slyly satirical as Posy Simmonds’ original, but her rural locations and leading lady are equally ravishing and the frisky rapport between Arterton and Lucchini is a joy.
Certificate 15. Runtime 95 mins. Director Anne Fontaine
Gemma Bovery is available to rent from Amazon
