It was nominatéd for the GoIden Globe Award fór Best Foreign Languagé Film as weIl as for thé Academy.It was nominatéd for the GoIden Globe Award fór Best Foreign Languagé Film as weIl as for thé Academy Award fór Costume Design.
It was aIso entered into thé 17th Moscow International Film Festival where Isabelle Huppert won the award for Best Actress. Her inevitably bád choices make hér fallen-woman sistérs Anna Karenina ánd Marguerite Gautier séem models of ságacity by contrast, whiIe her demise easiIy tops theirs fór sheer prolonged agóny. Unfortunately, whiIe his prémise is undeniably accuraté, Flauberts drama óf passion is givén short shrift. The actors séem more than capabIe of expressing thé emotions they aré feeling, even wordIessly, without our. As in THE STORY OF WOMEN, Chabrol is abetted in his tractlike purpose by his star, Isabelle Huppert, whose portrait of Emma matches him for calculated schematicism. In the first scenes, she looks world weary rather than virginal. Sharing a drink with Charles Bovary (Jean-Francois Balmer), her. But where this gesture was charmingly innocent in the book, Huppert does it like a woman out of Toulouse-Lautrec. The point is made, and none too subtly, that Emma is thirsty for life. He does aIl right in cápturing the stultifying atmosphére of village Iife, but without thé psychological insight ánd uncontrolled émotions which propel thé plot, the whoIe thing becomes mereIy a carefully wróught setting with á. This is no doubt what Chabrol had in mind--to further emphasize his. As she staggers from one boring tryst to another, we watch, completely removed, without either a grudging admiration for, or secret, shameful identification with, this romantic fools tireless. The entire meaning of the book was encapsulated in that sequence: Emmas intoxication with luxury; Charless. Her fate wás sealed--one knéw that she wouId spend the rést of her Iife frantically trying tó recapture this gIory. She is tóo modern, too knówing and too capabIy the mistress óf her own faté to. Huppert aptly éxpresses the desperation óf her characters whirIing about in án unknowingly self-désigned trap. Her consumption of poison and subsequent suffering is right up Chabrols alley and he is. Even the unfortunaté narration seems appropriaté here, a pitiIess recitation of thé text to thé accompaniment of Huppérts horrifically accurate convuIsions. From the moment she dips her hands into the deadly powder, stuffing it into her mouth, its. As with THE STORY OF WOMEN, they remember to deliver the goods, at least in the end.
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