Fontaine and Luchini are back with GEMMA BOVERY-- and our Emma is all the better for it

That endlessly bored bourgeois young woman, Emma Bovary, returns to the screen this week in the first of two new incarnations. While the second, starring Mia Wasikowska, opens mid-June and is said to hew much closer to the Flaubert novel on which it is based, Anne Fontaine's new comedic twist on the tale has given me and my spouse the most enjoyable time we've had at the movies so far this year.

Fontaine, shown at right, both directed and co-wrote (with Pascal Bonitzer, from the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds) the film, and her surprising and engaging stamp is all over this delectable little movie. This is a filmmaker who loves to tease her audience, setting us and our bourgeois notions up for a fall, often in the most hilarious and provocative ways (see Adore, My Worst Nightmare, The Girl from Monaco, and Dry Cleaning for a nicely varied taste of Fontaine's offerings).

Here she takes a number of Flaubert's notions about character, class, women, men, economics and sexuality, and whips them into a frothy, bubbling delight. What's particularly new and wonderful is how she uses the novels (Simmonds' and Flaubert's) to hold a mirror up to some of the differences between British and French society.

In Fontaine's tale Madame Bovary becomes Gemma Bovery (note the change of an "a" to "e"), an English lass recently married to a man who restores antiques (how nice to see Jason Flemyng, above, in a big, solid role again), with the two of them now coming to live in the charming French countryside.

As Gemma, British actress Gemma Arterton (above) does yet another bang-up job in a role that seems absolutely made for her. From St. Trinian's through Tamara Drewe to the more recent Byzantium and The Voices, this fine, young and very beautiful actress keeps using her major skills and looks in increasingly diverse roles. This, along with Tamara Drewe, may be her best performances to date. The actress seems looser, freer, yet much more complex here than most of her roles have so far allowed.

Ms Fontaine's other ace-in-the-hole, as often of late, is the performance of her ex-main-squeeze, Fabrice Luchini, shown above and below, in the film's actual leading role. Luchini plays a local baker so smitten with Flaubert's masterpiece that he finds himself falling in love with Gemma, even as he himself becomes a kind of Bovary character --bored with his own provincial life and struggling to latch on something better.

One of the France's finest actors and always a joy to watch, I would say that Luchini outdoes himself here -- except that you could say that about every one of his performances, from Claire's Knee onwards to the more recent Paris, The Women on the Sixth Floor, In the House and Bicycling With Moliere. To name but a few.

As bubbly, fun and funny as the film consistently is, there of course remains that dark side (as there always is in a Fontaine film, as well as -- in spades -- the original Flaubert). We know from the beginning that Gemma is deceased. How and why, however, remain a mystery that is solved -- wonderfully, wackily, sadly, ironically -- only at the finale.

Meantime, we get a supporting cast made up of some terrific performers, chosen and directed with superb flair and finesse. Look for Elsa Zylberstein, Pip Torrens, Isabelle Candelier, Niels Schneider (above, left), Edith Scob and Mel Raido, each of whom does a fine job of bringing to life, often with very little screen time, the character in question.

Lots of ideas scatter and fly from the screen as the movie unfurls, chief amongst them, perhaps, is that of woman as sacrificial lamb to male desire. But don't let me turn you off with too much weighty theme, for that is but an added inducement in a film that has everything: romance, sex, intelligence, charm, humor and sublime deftness. Ms Fontaine maintains a tone here -- light, satiric, tricky and consistently surprising -- that could hardly be bettered.

Gemma Bovery, from Music Box Films and running a sleek 99 minutes, open this Friday, May 29. In New York City, you'll find it at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Landmark's Sunshine Cinema. In Los Angeles, look for it at The Landmark in West L.A, as well as at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5.  Soon it will be playing all around the country. Click here and scroll down to see currently scheduled playdates, with cities and  theaters.

YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET: M. Resnais' playful masterwork to open in the L.A. area

When the latest film from that French giant of cinema, Alain Resnais, opened here in New York City at the beginning of this month, it received the usual, mostly sterling reviews that this fellow tends to collect (80% positive critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, with 70 % of the audience liking it). Yet the film -- rather deliciously titled YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET -- played but a single week at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan, then beat it out of town. The attendance was not, shall we say, staggering -- and nothing like it would have been back in the 1960s and 70s, when foreign films were in their heyday.

M. Resnais, shown at right, is now 91 years of age, and he just keeps cranking 'em out -- on a schedule, these days, of a film every three years. He's no Woody Allen (in terms of output, or most any other way) but this achievement remains pretty impressive, particularly since his films (with maybe the exception of I Want to Go Home, which, over-the-top as it is, offers some bold fun) are remarkable, intelligent, surprising and varied. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (from here on to be known as YASNT) is all of these things -- and a good deal more. Combining techniques from theatre and film, the movie actually joins the two at times, distilling a particular kind of artifice that, I suspect, no one does better than the French.

The story, such as it is, involves a famous (and imaginary) playwright named Antoine d'Anthac (played by Denis Podalydès, shown at bottom, center) who had suddenly died. His last request is to the set of real actors, famous French men and women who have supposedly worked with and for this guy. They meet at his castle-like home high on a hill, where they learn that he has instructed them to critique a new production of his play Eurydice (actually the play by the famous mid-20th Century French playwright Jean Anouilh, together with material from another of his plays, Cher Antoine ou l'amour raté, with which I am not familiar).

These actors comprise some of the cream of the French stage and film scene, and because they all have played parts in this play previously, now, as they watch the young cast auditioning for the right to perform the play again by presenting a filmed rehearsal, the older crew begins to perform the play themselves -- with great relish and enthusiasm. Except they are far too old for the roles now. And yet, how very well do they perform them!

Anouilh's play is a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend, but, ah, what a grown-up version of the myth we have here! It's moral, thought-provoking, moving, and fiercely intelligent as it nails everything from the male's destructive jealousy to the female's need for love at any cost. And in giving us an Orpheus and Eurydice shown in youth, middle age (Lambert Wilson and Anne Consigny, above) and the senior years (Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi, below), Resnais plays with age, theater, film and performance in quite wonderful ways.

Anouilh's play is also about death, the fear and the embracing of it, as well as about life and the fear and embracing of it, too.  (It gives that amazing actor Mathieu Amalric, below, the opportunity to play a superbly intelligent version of Hades, and he seems absolutely born to it.) In all, this is a wonderful work, combining that special French combination of drama, philosophy, romance and artifice. The film, in fact, should send audiences back to the original source.

Meanwhile, we have YASNT to content us. And if this short review makes the movie sound rather special, exotic and for sophisticated tastes -- it is. Being conversant with the classics will help, and if you are initially put off by the artifice, know that, as it moves along, the film grows stronger and more surprising and meaningful.

Resnais' set design of very theatrical rooms adds to the artifice, and his use of split screen  is absolutely first-rate, making the differences between the various Orpheuses and Eurydices shine all the stronger. TrustMovies is delighted that in Los Angeles, the film -- from Kino Lorber and running 115 minutes -- will be opening this coming Friday, July 5, at three venues: Laemmle's Royal, in West L.A., the Town Center 5 in Encino and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Click here, then scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

The genre-jumping Stephen Frears gifts us with TAMARA DREWE. Thank you, say I.

Stephen Frears (shown below) is at it again -- bouncing around from genre to genre but leaving his own special mark on the proceedings. Thrillers, westerns, bio-pics, noirs, comedies, smart political/social broadsides, character studies, historic costume melodramas, and much else -- including some Hollywood product like Hero (which would probaly lie at the bottom of my Frears list). But even that one (and/or Mary Reilly) had some some good things to offer. At the top of the list lie most of his other movies, all jostling for first, second or third place because they're all good films. This time out--with his newest, TAMARA DREWE (which goes immediately to near the top of my Frears list)--his chosen genre may remind you of a cross between drawing-room comedy (set mostly outdoors in the glorious English countryside) and social satire that targets academia, as well as the middle and lower British classes.

Based on the supposedly beloved (though unknown by me) graphic novel by Posy Simmonds, itself inspired  by Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, the movie is hardly Hardy. The references may be there, all right, but the film is far too much fun -- bright, saucy and snappy -- to put you in mind of the dark master's work. Taking place in what seems to be a kind of writer's colony cum-season-long-bed-and-breakfast run by a famous and best-selling-but-caddish writer and his long-suffering wife, the movie spins so many small plots and loopy characters into the mix that you fear for its ability to bring anything home. Put those fears to rest, dear viewer, for surely we have learned by now: No fears when Frears is afoot.

Though the movie does begin with a very Hardy-esque visual, as a sexy, sweaty man of the soil (Luke Evans, above) chops woods and has us imagining that we're a century or more back in time, the filmmaker then plops us first in media res, as a zaftig young woman in a nifty automobile arrives in town for a dalliance with our famous author (Roger Allam, below, in what is probably the movie's most perfect performance).

From here the ball starts rolling and never stops. We meet that put-upon but quite charming wife (Tamsin Grieg, below, left) and, among her several writer/guests, an American academic played by Bill Camp (below, right). These two provide the film with its sweetest, most likable characters.

The film's titular star Gemma Arterton, is certainly its main physical attraction. Ms Arterton (on poster, top), stacked and stoked, is a bundle of energetic joy as the young woman who left her family's mini-mansion in this small town as an ugly duckling and now, with some pronounced plastic surgery, has returned as the sexy swan.

There are also a couple of young "townie" girls, played by Jessica Barden (above, left) and Charlotte Christie, at right) fixated on a current rock star, one of whom looks likely to grow into up into, to use a Brit vernacular term, a right proper "slag";

that rock star with whom the girls are infatuated (and yes, as personified by Dominic Cooper, shown at left, he's a naughty hunk indeed, sporting an appealing set of drumsticks -- with which he gives an impromptu kitchen concert -- and some other nice equipment);

various and assorted would-be writers;

a herd of cows and one very energetic dog (shown with Mr. Cooper).

Terrible things happens to some of these characters, but I swear the smile will never leave your face. In fact, as the film rolls along, thanks to Mr. Frears' pitch-perfect ability to hold the right tone, that smile should turn into one hell of a grin -- never more so than when death descends on the scene. 

How and why the movie works so well is also due in no small part to the contribution of screenwriter Moira Buffini, who has taken Ms Simmonds' "novel" and, we are told in the press materials, added some of her own extensions. She's done a bang-up job of creating full-bodied characters -- all self-involved and ripe for satire, but some nastier than others -- then weaving them and their mini-plots together so that the movie builds gradually into an explosion of great, dark fun. One might have wished for a tad more succulent dialog. What we have is perfectly serviceable and does a fine job of getting us from A to B and finally Z. Dollops of Coward or Wilde would have been nice, of course, but as someone once said, "Why ask for the moon when we have the stars?"

Tamara Drewe, from Sony Picture Classics (my goodness, this company is currently on a roll), opens this Friday, October 8, in both New York City (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Regal Union Square) and in Los Angeles. It will be arriving for the rest of you lucky Americans in a nearby city soon.