1974 saw Sylvia Krystel play Emmanuelle, a bit of soft core erotica that crossed over into the mainstream and spawned five more sequels over two decades. So 50 years later we now have a remake / reboot bought to us by director Audrey Diwan whose previous film ‘Happening’ (2021) was BAFTA nominated for its story of illegal abortion in 1960’s France. That theme of a woman’s control over her own body continues with her follow up film Emmanuelle that focusses on the pleasure rather than pain.
This time round Emmanuelle (Noemie Merlant) rather than being the bored wife of a diplomat as seen in 1974 is now an independent woman with her own career as some sort of luxury hotel surveyor.
And right from the start it seems that leisure is her pleasure, at least for herself anyway, when we first encounter her on a first class flight before she joins the mile high club with a passenger in that most sensual of locations, the toilet. It’s not the first time we’ll catch her rutting away like a safari park chimp though as she leaves the cabins toilets catching the eye of Kei (Will Sharpe) who she will later find staying at the luxury hotel she will be compiling a report on.
At the six star hotel she goes about her work timing how long it takes for her order to arrive, checking on the quality of the restaurant and of course having sex with the guests at frequent intervals although that last bit she doesn’t seem to file any report on. Instead we get often careful framed shots of her sexual dalliances with a couple she picks up at the hotel bar, an escort she follows to a shed in the hotel grounds and the inevitable build up towards a liaison with Kei, a guest who describes himself as a ‘FIT’, a Frequent International Traveller’ and using a similar acronym we never hear Emmanuelle describe herself as Sexually Liberated Available Guest.
What plot there is between the scenes of writhing concerns her being instructed to find fault with the highly paid hotel manager (Naomi Watts cropping up presumably as unexpectedly for herself as it is for the audience) so that the company can fire her in a cost cutting exercise. There’s an opportunity for some dramatic scenes of conflict here but the film passes on the chance to do so
Following the very template of adult films itself the story is thin to transparent, as is any characterization and the film doesn’t really seem to be sure how to play the albeit banal dialogue whether it be archly camp or just delivering lines so knowingly that a wink to the audience would not go amiss but chooses instead to be intensely serious.
Those seeking their thrills will find the sex scenes strictly vanilla without even the lurid curiosity akin to those in the, ‘50 Shades of Grey’ films and it unclear really as to just who this is all meant to appeal. The era of such flicks like ‘9 ½ Weeks’ are long over trampled by the internet ability to cater to even the most obscure of fetishes.
Instead it panders more to an audiences voyeurism than anything else as reflected in an early scene that sees a male porter covertly watch her in the bath shaving her Brazilian strip although a Gaza strip would seem more appropriate as no one would seem to be getting out of this in one piece. That said it is a beautifully lit film, fittingly similar to a Conde Nast magazine photo spread that you might find in the hotels foyer. But in a post #MeToo era this is a film that could only be helmed by a female director and yet there’s little if any sense of female empowerment explored here.
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Here’s the Emmanuelle trailer……
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