I don't think this really has a spoiler in it but I am just being careful! This is mostly a comment on commenter Lori's objections to the nudity in this version (she asks, where is there a reference to sexual techniques in the novel?), and also her objection to Rodolphe making Emma bleed during the rough sex. In fact, Flaubert suggests that Emma loses her virginity (not literally, but figuratively) to Rodolphe, not her husband Charles. By that I mean that after her wedding night, she is bored and unimpressed, while Charles is jaunty and energized the next morning. Then, after Emma has sex with Rodolphe, Flaubert notes that it is her turn to be newly energized, as she gallops around jauntily with her horse, and Rodolphe "mends his bridle", a sly figurative reference to her broken hymen, I believe. I think the bleeding suggests that Rodolphe has gone places that Charles never reached before, both sexually and emotionally for Emma.
Flaubert himself was prosecuted for writing explicit (for the day) sex scenes, as one where Emma strips naked for Leon and pounces on him, and another in which she uses words during sex (apparently "Oh God Oh God") that she previously had reserved only for prayer! Making this movie sexually explicit, therefore, is certainly in keeping with what Flaubert did.
Finally, several comments objected that this Emma wasn't very sympathetic. I don't believe Flaubert's Emma was intended to be very sympathetic. She was understandably bored and disappointed with the hand life dealt her being a woman and a peasant who was romantic at heart, and then stuck in a one-horse bourgeois backwater town with a clueless oaf for a husband. But she was selfish, dishonest, shallow, stupid and had God-awful cheesy taste in everything. This is realism, not romanticism, and Flaubert created no heroes --- just a cynic's view of real folks.
Flaubert himself was prosecuted for writing explicit (for the day) sex scenes, as one where Emma strips naked for Leon and pounces on him, and another in which she uses words during sex (apparently "Oh God Oh God") that she previously had reserved only for prayer! Making this movie sexually explicit, therefore, is certainly in keeping with what Flaubert did.
Finally, several comments objected that this Emma wasn't very sympathetic. I don't believe Flaubert's Emma was intended to be very sympathetic. She was understandably bored and disappointed with the hand life dealt her being a woman and a peasant who was romantic at heart, and then stuck in a one-horse bourgeois backwater town with a clueless oaf for a husband. But she was selfish, dishonest, shallow, stupid and had God-awful cheesy taste in everything. This is realism, not romanticism, and Flaubert created no heroes --- just a cynic's view of real folks.