Imagine what a team of smart, politically engaged, critically respected female French film-makers might do with a contemporary feminist remake of Just Jaeckin’s sleazy but phenomenally successful soft-porn classic Emmanuelle (1974). Well, keep dreaming, because writer-director Audrey Diwan (Happening) and actor-director Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) have resoundingly botched this potentially rich rumination on sex-positive female desire in a post #MeToo world. Instead of a clever reinvention, or even a knowingly camp throwback, this ploddingly middlebrow misfire delivers all anti-climax and no climax, which is pretty fatal for a sex-driven movie. Not even cheap thrills or transgressive undertones, just fifty shades of pointless, witless, joyless tedium.
There is much to unpack, parody and subvert in Jaeckin’s X-rated pop-culture landmark, which made a star of Sylvia Kristel, and the mini-industry of pornographic sequels it spawned. But, frustratingly, Diwan’s Emmanuelle bears only the most cosmetic similarities to its steamy blueprint. A sullen study of an emotionally repressed woman trapped inside a luxury high-rise hotel, it feels more like a stealth remake of Lost in Translation (2003) at times.
Indeed, Diwan claims she has not even seen Jaeckin’s 1974 original, instead returning to the 1967 source novel as inspiration. Billed as a semi-autobiographical story by Emmanuelle Arsan, the pen name of Marayat Rollet-Andriane, Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman was later revealed to be her husband’s work, adding an extra layer of male-gaze fantasy which a more adventurous Barbie-style film might have sought to address. Alas, Diwan’s version is straight-faced, self-serious and utterly devoid of humour. It world premieres this week in San Sebastian, closely followed by a Tokyo festival launch and theatrical release across much of Europe. But with backing from Netflix, it seems more likely to find its natural audience on small screens among curious, bored and possibly drunk viewers.
Stepping in after Léa Seydoux pulled out, Merlant radiates stern, steely self-possession in her starring role as the eponymous heroine. In this iteration, Emmanuelle is no longer the sexually submissive young male-fantasy trophy wife of the original film, but an empowered thirtysomething single woman with a jet-setting career as a quality control consultant for an upscale hotel chain. Her latest assignment brings her to the Rosefield Palace in Hong Kong, a glitzy skyscraper resort ruled with chilly precision by Margot Robson (Naomi Watts). Adding a frisson of intrigue, Emmanuelle’s remote male bosses pressure her into smearing Margot’s reputation, a subplot which promises at least a token critique of patriarchal power, but which soon fizzles out.
In between checking the hotel’s inner workings, Emmanuelle also has casual hook-ups with various guests, enjoying the occasional threesome and Sapphic fling, which Diwan shoots in a concise and tasteful manner. But her main obsession becomes Kei (British-Japanese rising star Will Sharpe), a broodingly handsome, chain-smoking mystery man who frequently books a room at the Rosefield, but never sleeps there. Initially frosty, the duo’s cautious slow-motion flirtation increasingly crackles with erotic tension, culminating in a three-way sexual encounter which Emmanuelle is shown to fully control and enjoy. This finale appears to be a belated rebuttal of the unsavoury rape scene in Jaeckin’s film, but otherwise serves little purpose, either as penetrating drama or porn-adjacent erotica.
In fairness, Diwan frames her take on Emmanuelle as a lightly feminist fable about one woman’s self-empowering quest for pleasure, which she defines more in psychological and emotional than carnal terms. Merlant gives a typically committed performance, including full-frontal nudity and graphic masturbation scenes, with her character’s informed consent and agency always heavily underscored. Worthy intentions galore, but all pretty tame and obvious, especially when we consider how Merlant addressed similar thematic material with much more grit and humour in her recent self-directed dark comedy, Les Balconettes.
In aesthetic terms, Diwan and her team admittedly deliver an attractive package, with handsome panoramas of Hong Kong harbour and a supple orchestral score sprinkled with Satie-esque piano twinkles. But the story itself is a tedious grind, full of wooden dialogue and jarringly charmless characters. The fact that both Kei and Emmanuelle are sulky, haughty, entitled bores with zero sexual chemistry is another minor flaw in this excruciatingly pointless endurance test of a film. There has not been an erotic drama this resoundingly unsexy since Basic Instinct 2 (2006), which at least had the saving grace of being camp trash. Emmanuelle is far too pompous and ponderous to even qualify as a guilty pleasure.
Director: Audrey Diwan
Screenwriters: Audrey Diwan, Rebecca Zlotowski, based on the novel Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan
Main cast: Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang
Cinematography: Laurent Tangy
Editing: Pauline Gaillard
Production design: Katia Wyszkop
Music: Evgueni Galperine, Sacha Galperine
Producers: Reginald de Guillebon, Marion Delord, Edouard Weil, Brahum Chioua, Vincent Maraval, Livia Dan Der Staay, Laurence Clerc
Production companies: Chantelouve (France), Rectangle Productions (France), Goodfellas (France)
World sales: The Veterans
Venue: San Sebastian International Film Festival (Official Selection)
In English, French, Cantonese
105 minutes
