Near-Trend: Sexy 19th-Century French Novels on Film

Yesterday’s announcement at Cannes that the actor-director Mathieu Amalric will adapt Stendhal’s 1830 “Le Rouge et le Noir” (“The Red and the Black”) means that three of France’s greatest 19th-century novels are being made into new movies. The others are Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” (1856), and Émile Zola’s “Thérèse Raquin” (1867). (Tom Hooper’s upcoming movie of “Les Misérables” technically can’t be added to this group since the source is not Victor Hugo’s five-volume 1862 novel but Claude-Michael Schönberg's 1985 stage musical.) Read the full post on Spotlight.