Title: The Apothecary of Yonville
Format: Feature Film Treatment
Budget: $20,000 treatment, but potential for prestige production
LOGLINE:
In this wickedly dry reimagining of Madame Bovary, the tale of doomed passion, disillusionment, and arsenic is retold by the least romantic man in Yonville—Monsieur Homais, the town pharmacist. A self-important rationalist with delusions of grandeur, Homais narrates Emma Bovary’s scandalous decline not with empathy but with smug commentary, dubious science, and a desperate bid to cement his legacy in the Annales Médico-Psychologiques.
TONE & STYLE:
Think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead meets Amadeus—but in the provinces. This is Madame Bovary filtered through bureaucracy, pedantry, and pompous footnotes. Black comedy abounds, with moments of genuine melancholy leaking in sideways, as our narrator unwittingly reveals the absurdities and tragedies of provincial life. Flaubert’s irony is not only honored but weaponized.
TREATMENT:
ACT ONE:
M. HOMAIS opens the story in voiceover, scribbling furiously in his cluttered study, quills flying, papers scattered. “This is not a tale of adultery and poison,” he proclaims. “It is a cautionary report—nay, a public health document.”
Flashback to Emma Bovary’s arrival in Yonville. Homais is immediately suspicious of her. She is too pretty, too proud, and worst of all, she reads novels. He catalogs her like a patient file: “Symptoms of emotional instability. Tendency to lace too tightly. Literary exposure above the recommended dose.”
Emma’s affair with Rodolphe? A footnote in Homais’ grand theory of female hysteria. Her longing for Parisian life? “Urban syndrome.” Her taste in furnishings? “Dangerously Romantic.” All is observed through the prism of Homais’ obsession with moderation, rational hygiene, and public acclaim.
Meanwhile, Homais fancies himself a Renaissance man: a poet of prescription, a Galileo of gut flora. He spars with the priest, offends the midwives, and brags about a minor article published in a now-defunct journal. When Emma begins her descent, Homais is too busy lobbying for a municipal title to notice. He is fixated on the greatest goal of all: the Legion of Honor.
ACT TWO:
Emma’s life unravels. She spirals into debt, has second thoughts about suicide, then commits it anyway with arsenic—procured, of course, from Homais’ own pharmacy.
Here, the tone darkens but grows funnier. Homais defends himself with bureaucratic zeal: “The dosage was clearly labeled. Side effects may include death if ingested with reckless abandon.” He notes, with clinical detachment, the “interesting hue of her vomitus” and submits a report to the medical academy titled "On the Arsenical Palate of the Female Bourgeois in Crisis."
He blames Lheureux (the merchant), the novels, and even Charles Bovary himself—but never, ever his own lax record-keeping.
Emma’s funeral is depicted through Homais’ commentary: “The turnout was respectable. I wore my best frock coat. The weather was humid, which can exacerbate grief and sinus conditions.”
ACT THREE:
Charles dies of heartbreak. Homais shrugs. “Cardiac malaise exacerbated by romantic foolishness. A common affliction.”
The final act sees Homais rising, inexplicably, like cream. He is honored by the state. He opens a second pharmacy. He gives a pompous lecture on agricultural chemistry attended by three drunks and a chicken. He never mentions Emma again—except in an appendix.
In a final twist, we see him writing this very manuscript, declaring, “Some may say I was a mere observer—but I was the only one who survived with all my teeth, my license, and my reputation. And that, dear reader, is what counts.”
THEMES & NOTES:
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Satire of bourgeois values: Homais, the embodiment of pompous mediocrity, becomes our Virgil through provincial hell.
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Truth vs. Narrative: Emma’s emotional life becomes a footnote in Homais’ self-serving tale.
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Science as Farce: Homais’ “scientific” explanations are riddled with outdated theories, mispronounced Latin, and unproven cures (e.g., leeches for heartbreak).
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Flaubertian Irony: Every tragedy is filtered through a man who understands nothing of beauty, love, or despair—but insists on explaining it all.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
Fans of Amadeus, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Favourite, and A Very English Scandal. Literature lovers, dark comedy aficionados, and those who suspect their pharmacist might be writing a novel about them.
