Madame Bovary

Barthes feels the need to improve on Flaubert, adding and dropping scenes and inventing social metaphors - mainly spiderwebs and corsets.

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.

This umpteenth adaptation of Flaubert's classic novel at least chooses its Emma wisely ...

For all the talk of romance, this is a Madame Bovary that's grounded in the real - in the sounds and colors of Emma's world, in its material limitations and splendors.

The Normandy locations are evocative, but director Sophie Barthes compresses Emma's multiyear rise and fall into what seems like a month or so.

Incapable of going deeper in its story, the film is a very superficial take on the material. [Full review in Spanish]

Mia Wasikowska isn't that bad, but her character lacks all the necessary layers to make us understand her erratic behaviour. [Full review in Spanish]

A faithful adaptation of the mythical novel that stands out thanks to it's great production values. [Full review in Spanish]

By not getting too fancy, Sophie Barthes scores one of the better adaptations with her slightly simplified but reasonably faithful Madame Bovary.

Mia Wasikowska shows that there is no period character that can resist her. [Full review in Spanish]

It is certainly beautiful... But the story, which follows a remorseless arc, is reduced to episodes that amount to a narrative shorthand and many characters - notably Giamatti's Homais - are hopelessly underwritten.