What do you think?
Rate this book
Autour d'Emma : Madame Bovary, un film de Claude Chabrol avec Isabelle Hupert
"Le pari était casse-gueule. Mais au vrai, qui d'autre mieux que Claude Chabrol pour adapter le chef-d'œuvre de Flaubert à l'écran ? À la fois adepte de l'ironie cinglante, du détachement narratif et d'un esprit frondeur, l'auteur du Boucher et de La Femme infidèle a trouvé en Flaubert une sorte de double littéraire. Et avec Madame Bovary – huit fois portée à l'écran, notamment par Jean Renoir et Vincente Minnelli –, la matrice de son œuvre. Peut-être en raison d'une trop évidente proximité entre ces deux monstres du patrimoine, le film n'a pas trouvé l'écho qu'il méritait à sa sortie. Et pourtant, porté par une Isabelle Huppert éblouissante, ce film non seulement reste constamment fidèle à l'intrigue mais aussi à l'esprit du roman de Flaubert. À la fois portrait acide d'une femme en proie à ses fantasmes et son imaginaire, dénonciation railleuse d'une petite bourgeoisie à l'existence médiocre et étriquée – délectables Jean Yanne en Homais et Jean-François Balmer en Charles Bovary – et tableau d'une humanité désœuvrée en proie à l'ennui, Chabrol s'en donne à cœur joie. Minutie de la reconstitution, intelligence du scénario, maîtrise totale du sujet, perfection de l'interprétation : un modèle d'adaptation littéraire à l'écran." --Sylvain Lefort
187 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1995
1 person want to read
About the author
Claude Chabrol
44 books3 followersClaude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge (1958), inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970) — all featuring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.
Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career.[1] In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière. On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996). Film critic John Russell Taylor has stated that "there are few directors whose films are more difficult to explain or evoke on paper, if only because so much of the overall effect turns on Chabrol's sheer hedonistic relish for the medium...Some of his films become almost private jokes, made to amuse himself." James Monaco has called Chabrol "the craftsman par excellence of the New Wave, and his variations upon a theme give us an understanding of the explicitness and precision of the language of the film that we don't get from the more varied experiments in genre of Truffaut or Godard."
Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge (1958), inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970) — all featuring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.
Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career.[1] In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière. On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996). Film critic John Russell Taylor has stated that "there are few directors whose films are more difficult to explain or evoke on paper, if only because so much of the overall effect turns on Chabrol's sheer hedonistic relish for the medium...Some of his films become almost private jokes, made to amuse himself." James Monaco has called Chabrol "the craftsman par excellence of the New Wave, and his variations upon a theme give us an understanding of the explicitness and precision of the language of the film that we don't get from the more varied experiments in genre of Truffaut or Godard."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 30, 2025
Madame Bovary, adapted by Claude Chabrol, based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary, the chef d’oeuvre by Gustave Flaubert is celebrated as one of the best books of all time, included on the list of the crème de la crème by a panel of geniuses, asked by the Norwegian Club to state the best that humanity has had to offer:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/200...
indeed, we have had in high school one of the best professors of literature that humankind has ever known and he talked with awe about Gustave Flaubert, the deity that our teacher considered to be the Jupiter of writers.
The author has famously said that “Madame Bovary is myself”, reminding one of other writers who have said similar things – Kingsley Amis also stated that, even when the passage, chapter is not about the creator, you can find him on every page…
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
Gustave Flaubert was one of the writers who made enormous efforts, he may be the epitome of the theory exposed by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers – which claims that 10,000 hours of practice over ten years, aka three hours of work every single day, would propel one to the top of his profession or art.
Charles Bovary is a country doctor, kind, able, if not outstanding, who happens to have a case whereupon he meets Pere Roualt, a patient with a broken leg that he cures and...the patient becomes interested in marrying his daughter to the decent physician.
Emma Roualt is portrayed by Isabelle Huppert, who is holding with Meryl Streep on to the position of best actress in the world, even if in this romantic drama she seems to have had less luck with the setting, production or maybe relationship with other crewmembers on the set.
Miss Roualt is asked by her father – who had warned the doctor about his intentions and had said that if he makes a sign at the window, then she would have accepted – about her position regarding the good – probably soon to be prosperous – doctor and she agrees, although she is not thrilled.
Life would be agreeable perhaps, for some time, but this is a young woman who represents youth with its insatiable passion, the desire for excitement, new endeavors, fun, activity as opposed to the dullness the taedium vitae, ennui that is the archetype of country life, especially during her time.
“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
Furthermore, she has some clashes with her mother-in-law, defended by her husband to a certain point, but faced with severe criticism, rejection actually of her plans to spend more on what her foe sees as futile, embarrassing expenses.
When Charles Bovary announces that Emma would have procurement, granting her access to money, making her able to spend with more ease, his mother, sited at the table with the couple is outraged, provoking the heroine to declare that she would burn the damned thing.
“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright.
Well, that may well be, only some more excitement is needed, and the protagonist becomes infatuated with Rodolphe Boulanger, after he brings an employee to see the doctor, then pursues, trying to seduce the married woman.
The two lovers ride together, in fact, Rodolphe Boulanger asks Charles Bovary – this somewhat amusing, but also cynical – about the benefits of riding, which would make Madame Bovary feel so much better…is it not so, doctor?
Seeing as they have no horse – point that Emma makes – the generous, kind Mr. Boulanger offers to help, they stop in the forest, where they make love, and the romantic, if married woman becomes enchanted, mesmerized, thrilled:
“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”
She is probably lucky to have experienced emotions so powerful overwhelming, transforming, exhilarating, glorious, even if – nobody would need spoiler alerts in the case of one of the best-known tragedies, right? – the result is not lasting, that is she does not have a happy, long life…
“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”
Emma Bovary has gone “to infinity and beyond”, and we can think of what happened to Fyodor Dostoevsky and the intensity, immensity of minutes.
The author of Crime and Punishment, the Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov has been sentenced to death, sent in front of the execution squad, where he had three minutes left, one he dedicated to friends and family, another to pass his life in front and the last for a ray of sunshine falling on a cupola nearby…
He is pardoned in the last moment and writes in his masterpieces about the significance of minutes, how the man condemned to death understands the importance of time, life – he would rather live on a bare rock, in the middle of the ocean than die.
Through her love, Emma Bovary has attained bliss, the higher state of being, “the infinity of passion”.
Madame Bovary, the chef d’oeuvre by Gustave Flaubert is celebrated as one of the best books of all time, included on the list of the crème de la crème by a panel of geniuses, asked by the Norwegian Club to state the best that humanity has had to offer:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/200...
indeed, we have had in high school one of the best professors of literature that humankind has ever known and he talked with awe about Gustave Flaubert, the deity that our teacher considered to be the Jupiter of writers.
The author has famously said that “Madame Bovary is myself”, reminding one of other writers who have said similar things – Kingsley Amis also stated that, even when the passage, chapter is not about the creator, you can find him on every page…
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
Gustave Flaubert was one of the writers who made enormous efforts, he may be the epitome of the theory exposed by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers – which claims that 10,000 hours of practice over ten years, aka three hours of work every single day, would propel one to the top of his profession or art.
Charles Bovary is a country doctor, kind, able, if not outstanding, who happens to have a case whereupon he meets Pere Roualt, a patient with a broken leg that he cures and...the patient becomes interested in marrying his daughter to the decent physician.
Emma Roualt is portrayed by Isabelle Huppert, who is holding with Meryl Streep on to the position of best actress in the world, even if in this romantic drama she seems to have had less luck with the setting, production or maybe relationship with other crewmembers on the set.
Miss Roualt is asked by her father – who had warned the doctor about his intentions and had said that if he makes a sign at the window, then she would have accepted – about her position regarding the good – probably soon to be prosperous – doctor and she agrees, although she is not thrilled.
Life would be agreeable perhaps, for some time, but this is a young woman who represents youth with its insatiable passion, the desire for excitement, new endeavors, fun, activity as opposed to the dullness the taedium vitae, ennui that is the archetype of country life, especially during her time.
“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
Furthermore, she has some clashes with her mother-in-law, defended by her husband to a certain point, but faced with severe criticism, rejection actually of her plans to spend more on what her foe sees as futile, embarrassing expenses.
When Charles Bovary announces that Emma would have procurement, granting her access to money, making her able to spend with more ease, his mother, sited at the table with the couple is outraged, provoking the heroine to declare that she would burn the damned thing.
“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright.
Well, that may well be, only some more excitement is needed, and the protagonist becomes infatuated with Rodolphe Boulanger, after he brings an employee to see the doctor, then pursues, trying to seduce the married woman.
The two lovers ride together, in fact, Rodolphe Boulanger asks Charles Bovary – this somewhat amusing, but also cynical – about the benefits of riding, which would make Madame Bovary feel so much better…is it not so, doctor?
Seeing as they have no horse – point that Emma makes – the generous, kind Mr. Boulanger offers to help, they stop in the forest, where they make love, and the romantic, if married woman becomes enchanted, mesmerized, thrilled:
“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”
She is probably lucky to have experienced emotions so powerful overwhelming, transforming, exhilarating, glorious, even if – nobody would need spoiler alerts in the case of one of the best-known tragedies, right? – the result is not lasting, that is she does not have a happy, long life…
“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”
Emma Bovary has gone “to infinity and beyond”, and we can think of what happened to Fyodor Dostoevsky and the intensity, immensity of minutes.
The author of Crime and Punishment, the Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov has been sentenced to death, sent in front of the execution squad, where he had three minutes left, one he dedicated to friends and family, another to pass his life in front and the last for a ray of sunshine falling on a cupola nearby…
He is pardoned in the last moment and writes in his masterpieces about the significance of minutes, how the man condemned to death understands the importance of time, life – he would rather live on a bare rock, in the middle of the ocean than die.
Through her love, Emma Bovary has attained bliss, the higher state of being, “the infinity of passion”.
Displaying 1 of 1 review