Madame Bovary (2000)

The book - I read it one day before I watched the film on DVD - is (as often) much better. It sounds like a cliché but it's a fact. It's difficult to understand the motives of Madame Bovary and one simply needs hundreds of pages to describe what's going on in her mind.

Of course the movie omits many details of the original story. Yet the actors who perform the personages of Bovary, Homais, Lheureux and many minor roles are cast well. However, Frances O'Connor is not a credible Madame Bovary. I think it is difficult to find a actress for this complicated character. I could not help imagining that Emma Thompson might have been a much more sympathetic and understandable Emma Bovary.

Yet I think the BBC deserves a 7 out of 10 for this attempt to represent Flaubert's masterpiece.