The remake of classic erotic drama Emmanuelle returns 50 years after the film shocked viewers around the world with its steamy scenes, but the rehash of the French film that was noted for its adult plot is just one big anticlimax, critics said.
The 1974 “softcore” cult hit starring Sylvia Kristel follows the erotic adventures of a young French woman who travels to Bangkok, Thailand, to enhance her sexual experience.
Directed by French filmmaker Just Jaeckin, the adult classic caused a huge stir, with millions flocking to see Kristel, who appeared half-naked on a poster with a pearl necklace dangling over her breasts.
The film played for more than a decade on the Champs-Élysées in Paris and Spaniards, who lived under Franco’s dictatorship that saw the scandalous Emmanuelle banned, flocked to France to see the racy film.
But the most recent version, directed by Audrey Diwan and starring French actress Noemie Merlant, tells a revised story of Emmanuelle’s sexual awakening as she travels to Hong Kong.
Poster for the 1974 French film, ‘Emmanuelle’
Scene from ‘Emmanuelle’ from 1974, starring Sylvia Kristel
Poster for the 2024 adaptation of ‘Emmanuelle’, starring French actress Noemi Merlant
The French-made erotic film was famous for bringing softcore pornography to mainstream media.
Its leading actress, Kristel, also became famous for her steamy nude scenes in 40 other films, starring in adult versions of Lady Chatterly’s Lover and the World War I spy drama Mata Hari.
But in the era of MeToo, the version of Diwan, which premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain over the weekend, appears to have ditched its raunchy sex scenes amid its aim to shift female sexuality and pleasure away from the male gaze.
Talking with The times, Diwan said the film is “about how we treat pleasure in our society, not just sexual pleasure,” speaking of the surprising lack of explicit sex scenes in the film.
“If people want to see sex scenes, they have the Internet,” he said.
But as reviews of the film have poured in, the general consensus is that the long-awaited remake of the French erotic drama “can only be considered a disappointment from Diwan.” According to Variety, who called the film “a great anticlimax.”
The American magazine said that “the most striking departure from the 1974 film is a significant reduction in sexual content,” adding that “saying something new and substantial about female desire while also honoring the film’s defining spirit of bland, gauzy horniness is a complicated and potentially unfeasible task.”
Scene from the 2024 version of Emmanuelle, which has been described as an “anticlimax” by critics
The 1974 French erotic drama was directed by Just Jaeckin. The plot tells the story of a woman who travels to Bangkok to enhance her sexuality.
Screenshot from the new version of Emmanuelle, which is said to lack the raunchy scenes that its predecessor became famous for
A scene from the 1974 version of ‘Emmanuelle’. The film was the first installment in a French softcore pornography series
In France, the film sold 8.9 million tickets at the box office. It also became very popular in the rest of Europe, the United States and Asia.
For Daily screen, The updated version of the 1974 soft-porn classic is a “crippling, pointless reaction” to the original film, while IMBD called the revival “disappointingly hollow.”
Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter He has said that ‘the erotic drama Emmanuelle is more or less the embarrassing exercise in mindless revisionist cinema that most expected it to be’.
French newspaper Le Figaro He said he does not expect the film to be screened on the Champs-Élysées for another ten years.
Some critics have enjoyed the feminist approach of the new film, however, with European Cinema praising her for placing ‘woman in the foreground as a desiring subject, full of beauty, cinematic power and sensuality’.
Scene from the new version of ‘Emmanuelle’
‘Emmanuelle’, 2024, premiered over the weekend at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain
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