A welder’s daughter from Gravesend has enraptured highbrow Parisians, providing an unexpected boost to Franco-British cultural relations.
Gemma Arterton, 28, known for her roles in Tamara Drewe and Quantum of Solace, is starring in Gemma Bovery, a film that is due for release in France next week.
Her co-star is Fabrice Luchini, 62, a quintessentially intellectual French actor never at a loss for words — until he met Arterton, whose beauty, he says, left him speechless. He described her as a work of art in her own right and an atomic bomb, while critics hailed her performance in the film, calling it an “explosion of grace and talent”.
Arterton’s performance has got reviewers purring mainly because her performance portrays France in such a positive light. Le Point, the news magazine, enjoyed her portrayal of an English woman who likes everything France had to offer — “bread, cheese, men, she tries all of them”. She was a “living advertisement” for France.
It compared Arterton with Jane Birkin and Charlotte Rampling, two British actresses who are revered in France. Elle, the women’s magazine, called Arterton “La Brit girl qu’on adore” — the Brit girl we love. Admiration was fuelled by reports that she had spent several months in Paris to learn French and had a French boyfriend.
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The film is an adaptation of an illustrated novel by Posy Simmonds, the British cartoonist and author, that was published in 2000.
The book reworks the story of Madame Bovary, the 19th-century novel by Gustave Flaubert about a bored housewife who seeks to fulfil her romantic dream with her lovers, only to find frustration, debts and ultimately suicide.
In Gemma Bovery, the housewife is British but the plot follows a similar path. Luchini plays the baker in the Norman village where the Boverys buy a home after moving from Hackney, east London.
He becomes convinced that Gemma Bovery is a reincarnation of Emma Bovary, the heroine of Flaubert’s masterpiece, and strives to prevent her from suffering the same fate.
Anne Fontaine, the director, said that she chose Arterton after seeing her in the thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed because “I was very impressed by the sympathy she drew”. It was a mere coincidence that the actress had the same first name as the character she plays, the director added.
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Fontaine said that the film was “about the relationship between France and England [and] these English people who see Normandy as a sort of enchanted land where their problems will evaporate”.
Luchini said that cultural differences remained strong, with Arterton explaining to him that British actors remained on the film set from 8am to 9pm every day with only a “bad sandwich” to keep them going.
“She was amazed at our canteen . . . with us it’s beanfeasts all the time,” he said. “We are not yet the land of austerity.”