An interview with French director Anne Fontaine

Gemma Arterton in Anne Fontaine's new film Gemma Bovery.

Late last year I sat down with celebrated French director Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel, Adoration) in a Parisian hotel suite to talk about her new film Gemma Bovery, which opens in New Zealand cinemas this week.

The light-footed dramedy stars ascendant British actress Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Runner Runner) as the title character, a free-spirited English rose who has just moved to an idyllic French village in the Normandy region with her new husband Charlie (Jason Flemying).

There they encounter Martin Joubert (French comedy legend Fabrice Luchini), an ex-Parisian baker obsessed with the work of celebrated French writer Gustave Flaubert, whose most famous work is his 1856 debut, Madame Bovary.

Entranced by Gemma, and dumbfounded by the degree to which she appears to be the living embodiment of similarly-named main character from Flaubert's classic novel, Joubert develops something of an obsession with his new neighbour.

Meanwhile, the restless Gemma undertakes an affair with a local playboy in an effort to alleviate her boredom.

Gemma Bovery is an adaptation of a graphic novel by British illustrator and cartoonist Posy Simmonds, whose work also inspired the 2010 Stephen Frears film Tamara Drewe. Which starred ... Gemma Arterton as the title character.

Just as Gemma Bovery functions as a contemporary intepretation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Tamara Drewe riffed on English writer Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel Far From The Madding Crowd.

Still with me? Good. Just to make things extra confusing, new 'traditional' adaptations of both Flaubert and Hardy's works are released in New Zealand on July 9 and June 25, respectively.

Although there's an element of kismet to Gemma Arterton playing the title role in two successive Posy Simmonds adaptations that riff on 19th century novels from a modern perspective, the inevitable comparisons initially precluded Arterton's involvement in Fontaine's eyes.

"I didn't want to cast her in Gemma Bovery because of Tamara Drewe," Fontaine told me in almost impeccable English. "I put her aside, then I saw 10 other English actresses, and no one made me think 'It's here'. So I was waiting. Then I had a lunch with Isabelle Huppert [the iconic French actress who starred in a definitive 1991 adaptation of Madame Bovary] and she says to me 'I met Gemma Arterton a few weeks ago, she's fantastic! I saw her in Marrakesh and everybody looks at her, she's like a bomb'. I realised I had to meet her. It's completely stupid to be blocked because she has a past with Posy Simmonds. It's not the same story."

Director Anne Fontaine. Photo/Getty

Fontaine sent Arterton the script, then requested a meeting.

"When she entered through the door, she was like, 'Bonjour' and I say to myself 'Okay done'. Nobody can resist this kind of girl! She's so natural in a way. Beautiful, but not cold. She doesn't put any distance between you and her. She told me she was more attracted by this part, more interested in this part than the Tamara Drewe part."

Gemma is a considerably more substantial role. than Tamara, who was something of a cipher, although both characters spend a lot of time being ogled by men. Gemma is more in control of her own fate, but we mostly perceive her through Martin Joubert's eyes.

"He's kind of a director," Fontaine said of the amusingly pretentious character played by Fabrice Lucchini. "He lives the events through his imagination like a director. For a movie director, characters are more important than real life. It touched me a lot, this point of view.

Luchini, who some may remember from the 2014 French film Cycling With Moliere, is a master of deadpan panache. He can say more with a silent stare than most actors can with a lengthy monologue.

"I knew that he was the character since I first discovered the graphic novel," Fontaine told me. "I've known him since I was very young. When I met him the first time, I was having dinner with him, he was talking about nothing but Flaubert. He's very original. He has a taste for the words. He's not a Stanislavskian actor- he's got a personality. He can say, 'Get me some water' and it will be funny. He's very French. He has a femininity also. It's a special mixture. You have many actors that are very good, but not singular. He is singular."

Ostensibly a comedy, Gemma Bovery contains some pretty harsh moments.

"I think the film is light, but underneath it's not light," said Fontaine. "For me, when comedy is funny, it's because underneath it is difficult. It's loneliness underneath. And this balance was interesting to try to catch because it has to be subtle, not too pushy."

* Gemma Bovery is in New Zealand cinemas from May 27.