- Title: Emmanuelle (2024)
- IMDb: link
The character of Emmanuelle, first introduced by Emmanuelle Arsan in her 1967 erotic novel has been adapted several times of the years, most famously in a series of 1970s films starring Sylvia Kristel in the starring role of a young sexpot giving in to amorous, and often anonymous, sexual escapades with strangers.
Those 70s films weren’t exactly high art, but they are certainly made of stronger stuff than the 2024 version from Audrey Diwan adapting and directing Noémie Merlant in the title role. Featuring long stretches of hotel management and uninteresting small talk momentarily disrupted by rather perfunctory sex scenes, this Emmanuelle is one of the least erotic films ever made.
The plot follows Emmanuelle, cast as a quality control export for a high luxury hotel chain, to Hong Kong to evaluate the hotel manager (Naomi Watts). The film is only slightly more boring than that synopsis sounds. Along the way she’ll have a few timid sexual flirtations and encounters (most of which don’t’ appear to give her much pleasure) with the likes of Will Sharpe, Chacha Huang, and Jamie Campbell Bower. Honestly, the most heated things get is Emmanuelle playing with an ice cube.
A complete misunderstanding of the character, Emmanuelle is a timid film that might be interested in sexual pleasure as an idea, but this version lacks the will to actually explore those ideas and concepts in any meaningful (or even cheap and tawdry) ways. The result is a regrettably flaccid film.