This September, Music Box Films presents the home entertainment debut of Gemma Bovery, connecting the literature and cinema worlds in a charming, sensual, modern-day fable by acclaimed director Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel). The film stars Gemma Arterton, Jason Flemyng, Fabrice Luchini and Niels Schneider, and streets on September 1st.
Synopsis: Gemma Bovery is an adaptation of Posy Simmonds' popular graphic novel of the same name, itself a contemporary re-working of Gustave Flaubert's literary masterpiece "Madame Bovary." The story begins when earthy British beauty Gemma Bovery (Arterton) and her husband Charlie (Flemyng) move to a charming old farmhouse in the very same Norman village where Flaubert's classic was written a century earlier. Local baker and Flaubert expert Martin Joubert (Luchini) becomes entranced with Gemma—and it doesn't take long before he is drawing parallels between the literary and real-life women. Gemma catches the eye of a handsome local playboy (Schneider), and when her magnetic ex suddenly reappears, she seems to be fulfilling Joubert's worst fears that her destiny is linked to that of Flaubert's doomed heroine.
At once a cheeky literary mash-up, a sensuous romance, a witty feminist commentary and a heady celebration of French provincial life, Gemma Bovery is highlighted by an outstanding performance from the increasingly popular Gemma Arterton. Director/co-writer Fontaine was thrilled to work with Gemma as she took on the role of Gemma.
"I had seen Gemma in Tamara Drewe, and in a way I had told myself that because she had already played a character written by Posy Simmonds, this role wouldn't interest her. So I met with some English actresses with one objective in mind; they had to be sexy when speaking French,' recalls Fontaine. "But none of those I'd met with had aroused anything in me," recalls Fontaine. "Eventually I met Gemma Arterton, and as soon as she opened the door and read me a little extract in French that she had written, I knew that I was dealing with an atomic bomb; she gives off an energy that means you cannot help but love her."
Special features include:
In The Footsteps of Emma: The Making of Gemma Bovery