Yellow Emanuelle

This Hong Kong filmed potboiler packs in more melodrama than week's worth of 'The Young & The Restless'. This one is more of a throwback to the original 'Emmanuelle' trilogy(especially 'Goodbye Emmanuelle') than a D'Amato sleazefest. Chai Lee(Emy Wong)undergoes a stunning transformation from dour nurse to hot-to-trot streetwalker. Future Italian porn star/politician, Illona Staller, who would later go by the name Ciccolina(and have sex with an HIV positive John Holmes) plays Emy's competition. Exotic locales and some decent soft-core scenes round this one out. Recommended for fans of the original 'Emmanuelle', of which I am one!

British airline pilot George Taylor (Giuseppe Pambieri) enjoys a night out in Hong Kong with his work colleagues, but ends up in hospital after he gets in a fight with several men. While recuperating, George does his best to woo his beautiful doctor, Miss Wong, but when he is discharged, he hooks up with company secretary Helen (Ilona Staller AKA pornstar Cicciolina) instead. However, realising just how deep his feeling are for Emy, he ditches Helen, and declares his love to the doctor.

George and Emy become a couple and decide to get married. Emy prepares their new home while George is in London working, the pilot promising to keep in touch by mail. However, a bitter Helen intercepts George's letters and tells Emy that her man is in Australia and intends to marry the rich daughter of a sheep farmer. The distraught Emy tries to top herself, is almost raped by a 'friend', and drops out to become a hooker.

Frustrated at not being able to talk to Emy via long distance phonecall, George returns to Hong Kong, unaware that his woman is now walking the streets...

Yellow Emanuelle isn't really an Emanuelle movie: the lead character, played by Chai Lee, is Dr. Emy Wong-there is no Emanuelle. And while the film features the soft-core sex and full frontal female nudity synonymous with the Emanuelle series, the tone is different from the Laura Gemser films, being far more melodramatic and ultimately very downbeat. Despite this being a sexploitation movie, writer/director Bitto Albertini keeps it surprisingly classy, with great cinematography, solid performances and a story that refuses to wallow in D'amato-style sleaze. Despite the copious sex and skin, the film is actually quite moving: you'll despise Helen for hiding Emy's mail, and the film's final scene is remarkably tragic - certainly not what I expected.

This is Albertini Bitti's follow-up to "Black Emanuelle" which he made after his star Laura Gemser had moved on to much sleazier pastures with the infamous Joe D'Amto. Bitti went in the exact opposite direction by trying to make a film that resembled the pseudo-classy "official" French Emmanuelle films with Silvia Kristel. Technically though, this is not an Emmanuelle film--its Italian title roughly translates to "The Sensuous World of Emy Wong" and there is no "Emanuelle" to be found anywhere in it--but it was re-titled "Yellow Emanuelle" for its English-language release, which is not only blatantly racist but is also pretty confusing as the Javanese Laura Gemser is every bit as "yellow" (i.e. Asian) as the Chinese star of this one, Chai Li (whose character is named Emy Wong anyway, not Emanuelle").

The movie itself is pretty strange too. Rather than wallowing in sleaze and European-flavored absurdity like the "Black Emanuelle" series it tries to be a serious melodrama, but winds up just as absurd in its own soapy way. An English airline pilot (played by an obviously Italian actor)is mugged in Hong Kong and winds up in the hospital where falls in love with a Chinese female doctor. After she loses her virginity to him, he ends up re-assigned, and though he is supposedly deeply in love with her, he can't seem to be bothered to make a long-distance phone call to Hong Kong. Forlorn, the respected doctor ends up becoming a prostitute! And if all that seems pretty preposterous, just wait until the end which somehow manages to combine the plot of the greatest love story of all time, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", with the absolute worst, the Ryan O'Neil-Ali McGraw tear-jerker "Love Story".

There's not nearly as much sex as you'd expect from a film with "Emanuelle" in the title, but there are some nice nude scenes from both Lee and from everyone's favorite member of Italian parliament, porn star Ilona "Ciccalona" Staller (she plays a jealous secretary who sabotages the couple's relationship). For me though, that wasn't really enough to paper over the ludicrous premise and the giant cracks in the allegedly serious plot.

This is a disjointed movie. Seriously. The movie spends too much time on part of the story, and not enough on the other, where the sex bits in between are something of a cut and pace style. There are some really erotic moments as to Emy Wong's scenes of pleasuring men in the global trade of prostitution. She falls in love with a naval officer, who's called up on another trip and she hits the dumps. So, our shy Asian philly seeks sex from other men, after coming to the conclusion that Romeo's never gonna return. She really gets an education, after attending a sex school run by a strict money hungry madam. At the sound of a double clap, she has a thin shirtless Asian dude who tries out all the newies (fresh meat) and the positions amidst shots of pornographic art, one unforgettable scene has his nude ramming buttocks, reflected in a mirror, as he humps Emy. I loved that brazenness to this movie but on the whole, this one turns out to be quite a bore. Our naval officer tracks down Emy, and so begins a reuniting of lovebirds, where Emy gives up the biz. Tragedy strikes for one, when the two are interrupted by a former client in a restaurant, a middle aged guy who obviously can't get enough of her, or probably is infatuated with her. Emy refuses to acknowledge him. Such a typical scenario, of this 'hanger on/harassing customer, interrupt pro's new life' have been used in so many other prostitute type films. We do have some nice Asian night shots, plus a cat fight, involving Emy, fighting another pro for a standing street spot. And too we have some lotto game (I don't know what you call it), where the winner gets to see Emy do some nude frontal dancing, amidst a song I haven't heard in yonks.

From the promotional materials of the time, "The Sensuous World of Emy Wong" (better known by the unfortunate title "Yellow Emanuelle") one would think Bitto Albertini (aka Albert Thomas) was intending to churn out another soft-core romp, similar to the films of Joe D'Amato. However, after the opening montage around the seedier parts of Hong Kong, viewers finds themselves in the midst of a very different kind of film.

This is not unusual with Albertini's work. His legendary "Emanuelle nera/Black Emanuelle" (1975) was essentially a melodrama, with lots of soft-core fondling thrown in to attract the grindhouse crowd. Albertini concentrates more on dramatic tension and melodrama then his counterparts, with mixed results in most cases, including "Yellow Emanuelle." On one hand, you've got Ilona Staller (who later became on of the more off-the-wall figures of Italian porn) and Giuseppe Pambieri engaging in much (simulated) sleazy sex, accompanied by Nico Fidenco's pornoesque score. On the other hand, the romance between Chai Lee's Emy Wong and Pambieri seems to come from another film entirely. It's sensitively told, the actors really seem to believe in what they're doing, and their love scenes are beautifully shot (including one in an unfurnished bedroom that is just this side of art.) The drama works on some levels, Chai Lee creates a sympathetic heroine, although her plight (which I won't spoil for you) seems a little contrived and out of left field. The television version deletes the entire ending subplot (which, again, I won't spoil) and actually works better. The original theatrical ending seems hurried and contrived, so much so that it's intended effect is replaced by a giant "Huh?" from the audience.

All-in-all, the film is enjoyable and beautifully photographed. Those who prefer their sleaze a bit warmed-over but with *some* dramatic oomph will enjoy this picture. Those looking for something a bit more sordid may want to look elsewhere, perhaps to Joe D'Amato's huge catalogue of sexploitation.