At first glance, "Madame Bovary" may seem like an atypical project for Claude Chabrol: a costume drama with no murders at all (though there are a couple of deaths, plus an amputation!). But if you look closer, you can see that the meticulous production, the elegant camera work, the morally complex characters, the extramarital affairs, the methodically (and at times excessively) slow pacing, they are all characteristically Chabrolian. This film is not just based on a book, it feels like a book on the screen, with its linear, one-thing-after-the-other structure and the (unidentified) narrator commenting on the action from time to time. The exquisitely beautiful Isabelle Huppert gives us an intelligent take on the title character; the rest of the cast is fine. Not exactly an exciting movie, but a worthwhile and beautifully made one. **1/2 out of 4.
Review of Madame Bovary
