Madame Bovary

Before I start, I have to say I have terrible, terrible diction. I talk too fast and I mumble.  My high school drama coach made me rehearse with marbles in my mouth, and to no lasting improvement. My wife rarely understands anything I say without asking me to repeat myself. So I'm not putting on airs here. I freely admit that the worst efforts I mention here are miles above anything I can ever accomplish in a given day.  That said...

Flaubert was French, he wrote in French.  When the lights went down, I couldn't remember, but I suspected I'd be seeing a film in French, with subtitles.

The first character to open his mouth was Mlle. Emma's father, at her wedding to Charles, M. Bovary. 'Ee zpeeks een un ferry zick Franch accent.  I'm thinking, ok, that's how they're going to do it.  I can live with that.

Then some other characters speak.  I hear the Precise. Clipped. Diction. of a Trained. British. Stage actor.

Listen to Alec Guiness:

 

Mos. Eisley. Spaceport. You will never Find. A more Wretched Hive. Of Scum and Villany.

Sorry, but we're watching Madame Bovary. At this point I'm slightly trepidatious, but I've watched enough PBS where I can deal with a French accent and a British accent in a movie in France.

And then Emma opens her mouth. And then I fell out of my chair. She's American. No, sorry, that would be "sheezuhmercan." Remember Natalie Portman mumbling her way through the low-numbered Star Wars movies?  Oh. My. Fucking. God.

She's arguing with her husband, the country doctor, trying to talk him into fixing the clubfoot boy's club foot.  Her husband protests that the procedure is beyond the expectations of a simple country doctor.  "But you're not a country doctor," she says. Or that's what the script says. What she says is, "butchernoddacuntrydoctor."  I was digging my fingernails deep into the palms of my hands at that point.

For  Léon Dupuis, the young law student she has an affair with, they also cast a 'merkin actor. From apparently the same school of enunciation as her.  When he tells her he's lived in Rouen, the Big City, Emma, desperate for news of a bigger world than she's living in, asks him to tell her about it. "Rouen?" he says, "It's even better than you can imagine."  Or that's what he should say. What he says is "Izefenbedderthanukinamajin." Gaaah.

Emma's made mentions Emma's nice figure.  The secret, Emma says, is a teaspoon of vinegar with each meal.  "Afteraweek ya doneventasteit any more."

If there were nothing but other 'murkins acting in the movie, it would be fine. But all this mumbling is going on in the same scenes as actors who pronounce "duty" not as "doodee" but like a proper Englishman mindful of the British Empire's contribution to civilization would pronounce it: "dy-oo-tee".

Now I look up Mia Wasikowska's bio, and find that she's not 'murkin at all, she's a Strine! Krikey!  Well, I'm flummoxed then.

But all that being said, even though I cringed every time she opened her mouth, I have to admit that Mia Wasikowska was completely utterly suited to the part, and committed to the it all the way down to her shoes. Besides my problem with her diction, she was utterly convincing as the shallow airhead who is so facile the only outlet she can find that makes her feel fulfilled is compulsive shopping, and who can't summon the presence of mind to handle the equation income - expenses > 0.  By the end of the film I was gritting my teeth and clutching the arms of the chair watching everything go horribly, horribly wrong, and had completely forgotten my quibbles with diction.  Wasikowska was so convincing as this woman whom God had given just enough intellect to not be satisfied with where she was, but not enough intellect or drive to actually deal with it. And Wasikowska is beautiful to watch.

I remember being hugely affected by the novel when I read it, probably twenty-five years ago.  The film was powerful, and got all the important parts into it, and had the pacing just right.  When it finished, I had a quibble that the final scene wasn't what I remembered it in the novel, but I don't think the novel is what I remember of the novel either.  

And now that I'm writing this up, a week later, my memory of the film, individual scenes, is much happier than these notes I jotted down immediately afterwards. So I think it grew on me.

 

 

Comments

[haynes-linda@att.net]

oh Kevin,
I had such fun reading what you went through watching this movie, I could not help but laugh
all through the piece.
Thanks,you have put me in a right jolly mood and I will definitely skip this movie.

Linda