One of the few missed opportunities for me from last year’s Toronto International Film Festival from Anne Fontaine (the writer/director of Coco Before Chanel), Gemma Bovery dances along the demarcations that seek to define comedy, drama and romance. The story’s perspective belongs to Martin (Fabrice Luchini), a former urban Parisian now living in a small village and working as a baker who encounters an English couple settling into a nearby farm. The couple — Gemma (Gemma Arterton) and Charles (Jason Flemyng) — happen to bear the names of Gustave Flaubert’s classic characters and Martin comes to believe that their behavior seems eerily similar as well, which leads him to a more intimate study of their lives, complete with all manner of complications. Bovery will likely be a must-see for fans of the French bedroom farce, a far more sly and sexy affair than the broad silliness that dominates American rom-coms. (Opens Friday at Mariemont Theatre) (R) Not screened in time for review
