Word: gemma
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...developing a talking motion picture. Although he is an untrained amateur, there are glints of genius in him. The play deftly balances his private quest against vast social change, and culminates in an agonizing exile from a homeland that has already ceased to exist. Alan Howard plays the inventor, Gemma Jones (PBS's Duchess of Duke Street) his wife, and Jenny Agutter their servant. If plans work for bringing the show to Broadway, they ought to be imported as well...
...Gemma thinks of her lover thinking of her while Charlie (foreground) remains oblivious...
Just as the power of Flaubert's original novel comes from the author's almost clinically objectivist approach, the humor of "Gemma" springs from Simmonds' dead-on observation. Thanks to the use of Gemma's diaries as part of the narrative, "Gemma Bovery" often feels like a caustic and richly deserved counterpoint to the irritating Bridget Jones franchise. Imagine Bridget on amphetamines and you have a fair idea of Gemma Bovery. The characterizations of Gemma as a rudderless yuppie, Charlie as the befuddled schlub, various French and English twits and even Joubert, the largely sympathetic baker/narrator are all razor sharp...
...characterization comes from both her clever writing and exceptional drawing skills. Using what looks like a soft pencil and gray wash, she creates naturalistic drawings that camouflage what are actually carefully composed arrangements of gesture, posture and facial affect. One remarkable panel shows a Christmas dinner party at which Gemma and Charlie are seated. The hostess looms to the left, while a man scolds a child at the right, with all the other characters carefully positioned in the space to display a different state of mind. In a brilliantly satiric take on selfish love, Simmonds uses a thought balloon inside...
...Social satires tend to be pretty crude affairs in the world of comix. Cartoonists tend to succumb to the genre's temptations of broad, easy caricature. Posy Simmonds avoids this with her particularly English dry wit. Rich with memorable characters, literary depth, cutting humor and pictorial panache, "Gemma Bovery" sets a new standard for intelligent cartoon satire in graphic novel format...