Watch free movies

This “Madame Bovary” begins as teenage Emma (Mia Wasikowska) is packing up her belongings and preparing to leave the convent to marry the man her farmer father has arranged as her husband: country doctor Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes). But life in the small, provincial town of Yonville soon makes her miserable, as she spends her days alone reading or wandering in the garden while Charles tends to patients. Even when he’s home, he’s such a numbing drag that he may as well not even be there.

Emma longs for more—excitement, passion, status, love. She shows restraint at first when smitten law clerk Leon Dupuis (a boyishly romantic Ezra Miller) skittishly professes his affections for her. But she’s definitely ready for extramarital activities once the dashing Marquis (Logan Marshall-Green) makes even more overt advances. The affair emboldens her and gives her glimpse of the good life, inspiring her to spend more and more money she doesn’t have on lavish dresses and decorations from the obsequious dry-goods dealer Monsieur Lheureux (Rhys Ifans), who’s all-too happy to continue extending her credit. Marshall-Green and Ifans both do their best to enliven the proceedings, the former with sheer sex appeal and the latter with sly menace.