By now we are used to it, when sexuality is involved, the judgments are conflicting, perhaps tending towards denigration. We should reflect on this, without disturbing psychoanalysis, but it is a fact. Everything is accentuated if the topic concerns the female sexual sphere. It will also happen in 2008 with Valérie - Diary of a nymphomaniac always directed by women. Perhaps a doubt arises on the fact that perhaps women are more "capable" of tackling the subject than male directors, whose production with a porn vision borders on the ridiculous!
Duty premise to talk about the film in question which is inspired by an essay by the late psychoanalyst Louise J. Kapplan Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary. Kapplan, it should be remembered, was the leader in the 1960s, in the demand of the nascent feminist movement, for a sexuality free from the oppressive bonds of a fundamentally phallocratic society.
Streitfeld made her the thesis, expressed in the essay, that female sexuality, although free to express itself, is not immune to the impulses it has to deal with. That she then succeeded in transferring this reflection into the film is a cause for debate, but we cannot deny the courage to have proposed a thorny and easy subject to criticism, and she deserves the credit for having chosen an actress like Swinton. perfect in the role. All this leads to a positive evaluation of the film, although not free from some stylistic and writing imperfections!