THE STORY – Follows a woman and the series of erotic fantasies that she entertains.
THE CAST – Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang, Anthony Wong & Naomi Watts
THE TEAM – Audrey Diwan (Director/Writer) & Rebecca Zlotowski (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 117 Minutes
<It’s been exactly five decades since Emmanuelle, the literary creation of French author Emmanuelle Arsan, made her cinematic debut in the film of the same name, directed by Just Jaeckin and starring Sylvia Kristel. A massive hit upon release, albeit a controversial one (even back then, some of the sexual content was deemed too strong in specific markets, notably the UK, where the uncut version didn’t become available until 2007), it spawned a series of sequels (thirteen in total, with Kristel reprising the role in all but two of them). It became a global brand: other countries used the “Emmanuelle” moniker to sell completely unrelated projects, including the Italian “Black Emmanuelle” franchise by renowned porn director Joe D’Amato.
Fifty years later, the concept is ripe for a reboot, which has happened in the shape of a new film, the fifteenth in the French series, directed and co-written by Audrey Diwan (Venice Golden Lion Winner, “Happening“). Gone is the exotic allure of Bangkok, replaced by the gray spaces of a luxury hotel in Hong Kong. This Emmanuelle is not traveling to meet up with her diplomat husband; she is her own person, leaving France for work reasons. She’s employed by the hotel’s parent company and is on the ground to carry out a routine quality assessment, with the full cooperation of the staff, including the manager Margot, who used to be in her shoes. While there, Emmanuelle also goes searching for pleasure and is particularly intrigued by a guest who never actually stays in the hotel, with whom she shares multiple conversations about the concept of desire and the means to fulfill it.
The project was initially announced with Léa Seydoux attached to play the lead, only for the actress to drop out and be replaced by Noémie Merlant, with Diwan commenting that the first choice simply didn’t match the character she and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski had in mind. It’s easy to see why: with her past roles, Seydoux conjures up an image more similar to the conventional idea of Emmanuelle, whereas Merlant, who has less baggage when it comes to erotically charged projects, is more of a blank slate in this context and gets to find her own take on the character as the story progresses and the protagonist finds herself, rediscovering a side she had set aside amidst the pragmatic demands of the job.
That is, indeed, the most exciting aspect of the film: the pleasure/duty dichotomy captured in the drab surroundings of a luxury building that almost numbs everyone to the simple joys of everyday life. Walking through its corridors with efficiency on her mind, Emmanuelle is in dire need of figuring out who she is as a person, not a cog in the corporate machine. There’s an additional layer of symbolism in Merlant’s interactions with Watts, an actress 20 years her senior, and the notion that Margot used to be like Emmanuelle, almost as if there were a generational quality to this reinterpretation of the main character (coincidentally, the original film series ended in 1993, the same year Watts made her Hollywood debut).
On the male front, Will Sharpe is suitably enigmatic as the mystery guest Emmanuelle is drawn to, while Jamie Campbell Bower adds some humor as another frequenter of the hotel, a producer who regales the protagonist with anecdotes about his fraught relationship with a director who’s working on a commercial with him. It’s a fun allusion to a potentially wilder side of this world, one we won’t get to see, only hear about. Similarly, a location described as exploitative – most likely a reference to the franchise’s origins – remains a matter of words, far away from the visual realm. This is a film where Emmanuelle remains in control, even in situations that would not have prioritized her well-being in previous iterations of the story.
And yet, despite all these interesting elements, the film as a whole never entirely comes together and struggles to gain momentum. For all its flaws, some quite egregious, the 1974 version still had a sense of fun driving it (sometimes to a fault, as with the infamous shot – reportedly filmed without the director’s knowledge – of a woman blowing cigarette smoke out of her nether regions). On the other hand, the coldness of the business world envelops the whole picture from start to finish, leaving us with an intellectual exercise that doesn’t reach that point of liberation, which would be the cathartic counterpoint to the loneliness depicted throughout the film.
It’s almost as if Diwan, the screenwriter who presents a series of intriguing concepts, was at odds with Diwan, the director, who maintains a certain distance at all times. Even as the film’s climax approaches, Merlant’s confident performance is somewhat constrained by a movie that, unlike its protagonist, is somewhat reluctant to go all the way.
