Telluride Review: ‘Madame Bovary’ Starring Mia Wasikowska, Ezra Miller, Paul Giamatti & Rhys Ifans

| It is not prerequisite that the period costume drama needs a hook, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Joe Wright’s stylish “Anna Karenina” dazzled with a theatrical approach and Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights” borrowed an austere commitment to form coupled with an expressively Malick-ian appreciation of nature. Gracefully pitched acting can also be enough (see James Gray’s “The Immigrant”), but unfortunately for Sophie Barthe, her adaptation of “Madame Bovary” is largely bereft of these qualities in any compelling form. Instead the movie is delivered in a restrained, far-too measured method that is often flat and enervating. There have been countless TV and film adaptations of “Madame...