With her thousand-mile frown, Mia Wasikowska was born to play Victorian heroines, though she’s a little too intelligent and self-aware for Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, whose unhappiness as wife of a country doctor drives her profligate spending and extramarital affairs. Director Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls) gives this English adaptation of the 1857 novel a modest, naturalistic treatment that heightens the allure of the fine garments and household things Emma uses to fill the void in her life. Neither Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Emma’s husband, Charles, nor Ezra Miller as her lover Leon Dupuis registers with much force, which allows Rhys Ifans to walk away with the movie as the oleaginous merchant Lheureux. With Paul Giamatti.
Madame Bovary
1 hour 58 min • 2014
