Martin, an ex-Parisian with a deep appreciation for Gustave Flaubert, has settled in a village in Normandy as a baker. He sees a British couple moving into an old property across the road. Their names, Gemma and Charles Bovery, echo those of the leading characters in Flaubert's 1856 masterpiece Madame Bovary. Martin engages with the young couple and observes that Gemma's behaviour replicates that of her namesake, including romantic and sexual liaisons that suggest she is headed for a tragic finale like that of the novel. He intervenes but cannot alter the inevitable.
As of July 2020[update], the film holds a 54% approval rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 90 reviews, with an average score of 5.99/10. The site's consensus reads, "Gemma Bovery's bursts of charm -- among them Gemma Arterton's winsome performance in the title role -- are often enough to compensate for its lack of focus.".[9] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 58, based on 27 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[10]
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