Endowment Fun

THE MOVIE: “Madame Bovary”

THE SETUP: An adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s mid-19th-Century French novel of Emma Bovary (Isabelle Huppert, pictured), whose marriage to a dreary country doctor, Charles (Jean-Francois Balmer, pictured), fails to fulfill her lust for life. So she shops till she drops and propels herself into a series of ill-fated affairs.

THE LOOK: Emma has to be literature’s ultimate fashion victim. She hurls herself into a shopping frenzy, with no concern for how she’ll pay the bills. Her motto is spend, spend, spend. To be sure, clothes-lovers will simply swoon over her fashion picks. (Indeed, at a recent showing in the Beverly Center Cineplex, women in this reporter’s row provided a running commentary each time Emma appeared in a new dress.)

Her clothes are the height of Parisian chic and elegance circa 1850s, a moment in time when women wore corsets, crinolines and petticoats. Yet, style had attained a certain simplicity of line with fitted bodices and narrow sleeves intended to make a woman’s arms look slender, and long poufy skirts. In Emma’s case, dresses are stitched from precious silk stripes, silvery satins, rich velvets and paisleys. The colors shift with the seasons, buttery yellows in the spring, deep greens in the fall.

The joke on Emma, accomplished by costume designer Corinne Jorry, is that she goes so far overboard in her desire to transcend her tedium that can she look ridiculous in the context of a small Normandie town. Her clothes can be over the top, like the woman who puts on her diamond Rolex and two-carat studs to drive car pool. At a ball, Emma is simply overwhelmed by silk flowers--in her hair, on her bodice. Yet, give her credit, the girl has enormous style--even if it’s the wrong time and the wrong place. Her green Mandarin-collar, Chinese-style dress is so original, especially topped off with a small yellow man’s tasseled smoking cap.

The men in Emma’s life dress according to character: Charles, always in black tail coats and cravats because he’s such a dull man; her lovers, Leon (Lucas Belvaux) and Rodolph (Christophe Malavoy), in jauntier silks and linens.

THE SOURCES: All the principals’ wardrobes were custom made in Paris at the atelier of Bernadette Parris. All hats for the production were made in Rome.

THE PAYOFF: Endowed with a handsome costume budget, a skillful designer works wonders.