For Armistice Day, I went to the movie theater with my hosts to see my first French film. In fact, Gemma Bovery isn’t the first French film that I have seen, but it is the first French film that I have seen in a movie theater, without English subtitles. As it turns out, the film is about an English woman (Gemma Bovery herself), so a lot of the characters spoke in English. However, the action of the film takes place in Normandy, and it is mainly a French film, so it wasn’t too easy for me. But really, I liked the film a lot. It’s an adaptation of the novel Madame Bovary. The film was funny, heartfelt, and really well played. I appreciated the modern adaptation of a classic story. While Emma 
Bovary was destroyed by the man she loved, Gemma is destroyed by the men who love her – we could even say that their obsession with her is her destruction. “Destruction” is a harsh word for a movie that wasn’t really sad, but the morale is very serious in our world, where women are considered to be objects more than human beings. I saw the film in a Toulousain theater called the Utopia, that shows independent and foreign films (German, Spanish, etc.). The theater reminded me of a movie theater in St. Louis called the Tivoli that also shows independent and foreign films. Like the Tivoli, the Utopia only has three rooms and shows each film once per day. The seats are very comfortable, and there are bathrooms in the room where the film is shown, so I didn’t have to leave to go to them (I always think of bathrooms in France, because there are a lot less here than in the United States). I really enjoyed my experience at the movie theater, and I suggest that everyone goes to see this film. It is really entertaining. I plan to go to the cinema again this week to see another French film, Bande des filles. I hope I’ll like that one too!