Two years before Vincente Minnelli's definitive film version of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, this Argentine version of the Flaubert novel premiered in Bueno Aires. Like the Minnelli film, this Argentine production traces the rise and fall of a bourgeois wife who comes to grief when she recklessly aspires to the finer things in life. And also like the Minnelli film, the earlier Madame Bovary was compromised by censorial intervention, dulling the sociological bite of Flaubert's original. Mecha Ortiz plays the title character in the grand tradition, while her various amours are enacted by Roberto Escalada, Enrique Diosdado and Alberto Bello. So far as critics were concerned, the film was stolen by teenaged newcomer Graciela Lecuba in a supporting role.
by Hal Erickson
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