We’re used to directors working with the same actors more than once, but it’s much more rare to connect a performer with an author whose work is being adapted to the screen, unless that author is William Shakespeare. The last example that comes to mind is Richard Benjamin, starring in the back-to-back Philip Roth movies “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Portnoy’s Complaint” during the Nixon era.
While Benjamin was the ideal manifestation of a certain brand of Roth hero, actress Gemma Arterton steps up as another complex and bewitching Posy Simmonds heroine in “Gemma Bovery.” It’s a complex relationship between author, actor and character, since Simmonds’ graphic novels put a modern spin on classic literature: “Tamara Drewe,” adapted by Stephen Frears in 2010, imagines a contemporary replay of “Far From the Madding Crowd,” set in Thomas Hardy’s own backyard, and now “Gemma Bovery” takes it cues, as the title suggests, from Gustave Flaubert.