On May 7, the film «The Other Bovary» is released — a subtle French love story. On the eve of the premiere, we spoke with its creator, director Anne Fontaine.
Psychologies: How did you hear about Gemma Boveri?
Ann Fontaine: I was familiar with Posy Simmonds’s work on Tamara the Irresistible (1), and I was certainly interested in her novel with an obvious play on words in the title — Emma Bovary, the heroine of Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel Madame Bovary, and Gemma Boveri, the heroine of the day today. I started reading and was not disappointed: I immediately felt the comic potential and human depth of the characters in the novel. I especially enjoyed the author’s style, her ruthless humor and irony. And of course, the intrigue itself is the meeting of a baker and a young Englishwoman who turned the life of the protagonist upside down, convinced that he is already too old for a sexual and emotional life … There is some freedom in interpretation in the script: Posy Simmonds has a narrator (baker Joubert ) indirectly participates in what is happening, and in the film he appears more clearly and significantly.
Did you write the script with the author of the novel?
A. F.: We started with screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer and then Posy joined us to write the dialogue in English. It was an exceptionally valuable collaboration: sometimes we «changed» her plan, but she accepted our ideas with flexibility. It was interesting to watch her reaction when we came up with something new that didn’t quite fit the novel. For example, we realized that in a film, the narrative should be more dynamic and direct than in a novel.
How were the characters drawn?
A. F.: We wanted the baker Joubert to be in the foreground in this story, so that the viewer could see the intrigue through his eyes. This is where the film differs from the book, which has several points of observation. But in the movie it would create confusion. The main character Gemma generally corresponds to the character of the book, combining the features of «Madame Bovary» and an Englishwoman living today, insecure and fickle, not knowing how to build her emotional life, and at the same time attracting men with one look. But if in the novel she sometimes seems repulsive, we tried to make her charming and noble: of course, she manipulates men, but rather, she does it unconsciously. So in the film, she is not as calculating and, like Madame Bovary, expects something from love. Charles (Gemma’s husband) has also changed: in the book he is rather a neutral character, he has no charisma. I found it interesting to make it not too bright, but still charming. The baker Joubert appears in the novel as a pathological seducer, and I decided to make him more strange, restless and caustic, which adds to the ambiguity of the denouement of the story.
- Psychologies recommends: «The Other Bovary»
The baker himself perceives himself as a kind of deus ex machina, a fateful character, invisibly manipulating others … But this does not protect him from suffering in any way, rather the opposite?
A. F.: Watching what is happening in the house opposite, Joubert builds something that frightens him, develops relationships from which he himself suffers. And although in the past he probably experienced strong love experiences, work in a bakery and an orderly family life made his existence measured. And suddenly Gemma appears and breaks this balance, literally turns his head! He discovers his hypersensitivity, and, as often happens, platonic love brings inextricable suffering, because it does not materialize in reality.
Nevertheless, the «director» Joubert cannot prevent the inevitable…
A. F.: The irony is that Gemma unwittingly follows in the footsteps of Emma … This eloquently shows the inevitability and cruelty of fate. And despite Joubert’s attempts to control the situation, he fails. And when he claims that «life imitates art», he finds himself in the position of a person who can only accept the situation without the possibility of influencing it. And it is precisely these relationships — between fiction, fate and reality — that fascinate me and create the effect of surprise. This, it seems to me, is the difference between the film and classic romantic comedies.
Tell us why the role of Gemma was played by… Gemma Arterton?
A. F.: I dated a lot of English actresses. It was important for me that in French the Englishwoman Gemma sounded sexy. And only when I met Gemma Arterton and she read the text in French, I realized that I had a real atomic bomb in front of me — it radiates such sensuality … Therefore, samples were not even needed.
1. Posy Simmonds — writer, book illustrator, author of the book of the film «Irresistible Tamara» (dir. Stephen Frears, 2010).