The thought of a modern-day update of “Emmanuelle” with a feminist perspective seems riveting. Just Jaeckin’s 1974 cult classic soft porn is how so many feminists see and critic the portraits of sophisticate nudes that is still so relevant today that any words that seem to reinvent it become a metaphor in their own right. But on the other hand, neither ‘Emmanuelle’ is that great a project nor its ambitions are large enough to excite the viewer’s imagination: Fiddling with it, to make it seem new, is like trying to recharge a jelly that has no shape. One should not take it too seriously or have some hidden agenda to change such puffed-up ideas about women’s sexuality. It indeed goes against the central theme of Emmanuelle that portrayed delusional and nauseating female sexual liberation. Audrey Diwan’s latest film, unsurprisingly, fails to address either end of the spectrum and instead takes a deep breath in a cold room.
“Emmanuelle” is without a shadow of a doubt the damp squib that opened this year’s San Sebastian festival. Are we being too harsh? Not wishing to offend, we have to acknowledge the performance of the writer-director, Diwan, who earned a Golden Lion for her quite brilliant sophisticated, delicate but tough reproductive rights drama ‘Happening’ Three Years Back. Is it an equally implausible starting point for someone’s else story? Sure! But at least in principle language or thought scenario one can possibly correlate two stories where a woman authorizes key decisions over her bodily efforts. But more importantly, Emmanuelle has no particularly interesting observation or argument or finding to make about the women character of the story or any other woman-related abstraction, let alone sexual indulgence because the erotic is insufficiently over the top to tempt arthouse perverts. Most notably a video of a lifestyle film where dark woods and soft furnishings take prominence is astonishingly and blandly produced like an Architectural Digest Online promotional piece and is destined for commercial purgatory.
As Prince Eglises lavishes his resources on screen capture tools to take the lead, Diwan and De Zlotowski’s understanding of how to update this in an accompanying narrative that revolves around the depiction of sexual practitioners around bogus mores goes first Emmanuelle politics what is delicately referred to to a wife. Emmanuelle provides, And now there is no husband and the employment of his wife as a quality control review for a high-end hotel chain resort where she hardly does anything but when she does, a high-quality mattress is always nearby giving her an excuse to do even less work. Not once, but twice. But the most notable difference between the 1974 film and De Zlotowski was a drastic decrease in sexual content. No Emanuelle a backless dress and clad Noémie Merlant who plays Emmanuelle had more impact than her appearances on the plot Emmanuelle meets a handsome member of the hordes and then goes for the bed suddenly resigned of six stars.
The audience at home may feel cheated, but let’s face it the genre focuses on fulfilling fantasies of hot bombshells rather than plot twists oooh! milliards of screen light making love to one or more protagonists turns into, well, disturbing serene pictures of vacant backgrounds, as the filmmakers adhere to the long-standing custom of porn that has very weak plot explanations and cast personalities, without any accompanying ironic sense of looking sideways. Sufficiently devoid of any story, including a backstory, Emmanuelle is first introduced to the audience as lying comfortably in a cushy chair on a first-class flight to Hong Kong and the camera finds her in the center of the action, wherein a bob to the original, she exchanges glances with a well-dressed man, enters the restroom and the meaning of what she does no one actually needs to be said, she does it and completes the act with a stoic expression on her face and moves out efficiently without any disturbing movements. While leaving the plane she also does not miss to glance at the now familiar, intrigued eyes of another passenger Kei (Will Sharpe), a subtle and skilled engineer who subsequently explains his occupation to her as an FIT – Frequent International Traveler.
If the above explanation makes you wet, we would suggest you fasten your seatbelt because Emmanuelle has other plans in mind. However, Kei’s numbers are not in Emmanuelle’s cell phone, which sets off a frustratingly extended courtship sequence across the velvet hallways and the plush hospitality suites of the ethereal Rosefield Palace Hotel wherein they are both located.
While he does not seem very interested, she seems to occupy herself with the usual fun and games a menage a trois with fellow hotel haute-courts, some blood-curdling and literature quoting involving local escort Chacha Huang as Zelda yet an unreasonably lengthy portion of script space is devoted to some hardly interesting or even comprehensible passages involving some office politics surrounding the pesky Emmanuelle’s review is of hotel manager Margot (Naomi Watts who quite frankly looks bewildered to be present). You could think this girlboss subversion performed passive-aggressively and achieved the dramatic stakes that are certainly undercover.
Developing characters in interesting ways, however, is not orthodoxy in mature stories as viewers do not typically look for or expect an “Emmanuelle” variation expecting the complexity of the plot. When the more vulgar exhibitions of pleasure are absent, however, it is somewhat reassuring when Diwan steps in to include a lengthy and interesting setpiece about a sudden and unexpected tropical storm that rips through the quiet serenity of the hotel and most importantly, gives DP Laurent Tangy something interesting to photograph other than soft lighting and strips of silk sheets that look like they are fresh from the laundry. When there is use for it, as will mostly be the case, they do indeed do that, and remain so.
It might be said that there is an empowering intention in the cinematic portrayal of the modern Emmanuelle as a controlled and discerning woman. If that is the case there is a dissonance with it as the last act proceeds towards a rather direct old-fashioned narrative of sexual penetration featuring awkward lines like “lick upwards”. Also, there is very little feeling of a female gaze dominating the conventional sexy scenes. (The male form however is quite intriguingly absent in the complete visual picture.)
Writing wonderfully in their native French language, both Diwan and Zlotowski are completely helpless with most English dialogues that are neither convincingly realistic nor skillfully mocking the poorly-written style of soft porn films. Merlant has no particular experience from the visceral and emotional details of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and is too honest of a figure to bring any suggestive camp tension to words like “I got a whiff of his scent a bit peppery”. In fact, none of the performers provides a competent approach to any material that is both utterly of mundane and evasive to any humor it actually contains them most of them at the same state of emotional disconnection.
However, if you wanted to stay cool while watching Emmanuelle, the Rosefield Palace’s advanced air conditioning unit and system would also come in handy since it is a 21st-century blue movie that never has a sweat-breaking scene.
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