Sophie Barthes Quotes

Madame Bovary is timeless. It is not just about the female condition in France in the 1840s. It's not a simple cautionary tale. Emma is more than a character; she gives us an insight into human nature. With Emma, we are diving into the complexities of Flaubert's psyche.

Never give up. I do believe it is harder for female directors. I have been lucky to receive support from the Sundance Institute for my first film. I'm eternally grateful for their support. I think you need to be surrounded artistically and follow your intuition - always follow your intuition.

As Baudelaire said it so beautifully, Emma Bovary is an androgynous character. She cannot be reduced to a gender or a sociological type. She represents something bigger than herself. That was the genius of Flaubert: the ability to combine the general and the particular.

Flaubert's famous sentence, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary, she is me"), in reality means, " Madame Bovary, c'est nous" ("Madame Bovary, she is us"), in our modern incapacity to live a "good-enough" life.

I've only made short films and two features, which are very different. One is a surreal comedy, and the other is a period tragedy. I'm curious to know what misconceptions this could trigger

Madame Bovary is one my favorite novels. Emma Bovary will always be an enigma, but as the years pass, I feel that I understand her better. She has a violent nostalgia, almost an infantile nostalgia, to be understood by the men surrounding her. I like her relentless fight for independence, her rebellion against the mediocre, and her quest for the sublime, even if she burns her wigs in the process. I like that Flaubert never judges her morally for her self-destructiveness, for her desperate attempt to satisfy her wildest desires and appetites.