Deep Sigh
Maybe go back to the tawdry, bushy ’70s.
Emmanuelle
Director: Audrey Diwan • Writers: Audrey Diwan, Rebecca Zlotowski, based on the book by Emmanuelle Arsan
Starring: Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Chacha Huang, Naomi Watts
France • 1hr 45mins
Opens Hong Kong Feb 6 • III
Grade: D
Back in 1974, model Sylvia Kristel starred in a softcore trifle about a French diplomat’s wife following her pervy husband to his posting in Bangkok and embarking on an “adventure of sexual awakening.” Emmanuelle was based on Thai-French novelist Emmanuelle Arsan’s (Marayat Bibidh) book, and director Just Jaeckin’s film rode the ’70s mainstreaming of porn wave all the way to box office glory. There was a cheeseball Italian rip-off in 1975, Black Emanuelle (see that single ‘m’?) set in Kenya (see that ‘black’ part?) that also made bank, roughly a dozen spin-offs of the French film, more of the Italian one, and then renewed life on (then) burgeoning cable channels that needed all the content they could get. This shit played on a loop on new movie channels in the 1980s and ushered scads of horny teenaged boys into manhood.
Given the prevailing cultures of remakes and sex-positive female agency it’s no surprise Emmanuelle is getting the reboot treatment from a more womanly perspective. But Audrey Diwan swaps out the nuance of her brilliant abortion drama Happening with lazy conventions signalling “modern” updates of mid-century properties: darkness, inscrutable pseudo-philosophical blathering, existential pretension and lots and lots of luxury consumer goods. A plus? Kristel’s passive and entirely useless Emmanuelle has been replaced by Noémie Merlant’s hotel quality control pro (is that a thing?) Emmanuelle. Sexy naïveté replaced by girlboss sexual resignation. Also? The dreaded buh-buhng and the red “N” came up on the screen, so it’s easy to imagine Netflix having another dozen of these on the platform in 3… 2… But Emmanuelle is a dumpster fire, so we should be safe.
Deeeeep sigh
Movie horniness continues, following the anti-sexy Taiwanese hit The Chronicles of Libidoists and ahead of the sexy Korean rom-com Forbidden Fairytale (next week). For the re-gazed 2024 iteration, we meet our intrepid Emmanuelle in business class on a flight to Hong Kong – because HKG is so much sexier than BKK – in the first of her endless array of slip dresses. The film begins with a recreation of ’74’s famous mile high club romp, and on the way out she makes dead-eye contact with some other dude in the cabin. Arriving at Rosefield Palace (played mostly by the St Regis in Wanchai) she meets up with GM Margot (not sure why, but Naomi Watts) to start an inspection designed to get Margot fired – because reasons – which Margo is totally clued into. Emmanuelle makes notes into her phone about the status of each hotel department – green means good – and then we dive right into some first rate montage storytelling-slash-luxury travel advertising. Emmanuelle flakes out on her bed. Emmanuelle looks at her meticulous Michelin-starred food. Emmanuelle spies on the guests with the security chief (Anthony Wong Chau-sang). Emmanuelle changes her slip dress. Emmanuelle meets enigmatic engineer Kei (Will Sharpe, Giri/Haji) – OMG the dude from the plane!. Emmanuelle becomes obsessed with Kei. Emmanuelle masturbates with poolside prostitute Zelda (Chacha Huang). Emmanuelle self-models high-end lingerie – and then changes her slip dress. Emmanuelle ventures to Chungking Mansions (or is it the Mirador?) for an orgasm. For the record, suites at St Regis begin at just HK$6,300 per night!
Is this Emmanuelle better than the 50-year-old original? Well, that’s a low bar to jump, and its gloss and Laurent Tangy’s superior, Chanel/Dior/Prada-ready cinematography of the five-star spaces (an ideal choice for your wedding or MICE event!) don’t necessarily make it a better film, just a better looking one. Is it this generation’s Showgirls? Probably not, because it’s neither craptastic nor quotable enough to reach those campy heights; there’s no Puppy Chow bonding moment – though Sharpe’s Cantonese sex instructions come very close. I like Merlant, I really do. She was tremendous in her restraint in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and she flashed the right kind of mercenary bitterness demanded of Tár, but there was something blissfully retrograde, even then, about Kristel that took the boy toy sting out of her goofy, sometime felonious misadventures. Merlant is simply vacant and detached. Were she vacant and detached for thematic purposes it might be tolerable, but Diwan and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski give her no psychology other than… French? It’s all very repetitive and numbing – dear god Margot expounding on the hotel’s background music – until Sharpe (proving to be the stealth MVP) rescues a few scenes with his mystery man schtick. Perhaps there’s enough here to amuse all the dirty fools out there (you know who you are, no shame) but even they’d be hard pressed to get lathered up about this one. It’s more five-star hotel training video than movie.