In the 18th century, in the Norman countryside, Emma, a romantic young woman, marries Charles Bovary, a modest doctor whom she quickly gets tired of. Frustrated, she accumulates debts and lovers. She falls madly in love with Rodolphe, a young aristocrat who coldly abandons her.

Many have brought Flaubert’s great novel of adultery to the screen, from Vincente Minnelli to Claude Chabrol. Renoir added his own visual flair to this lush and soulful adaptation, in which torment of the heart plays out amid the beauty and stasis of the Normandy provinces.