Emmanuelle 2: La antivirgen

I fell in love and lust with Sylvia Kristel after seeing this and the other 'Emmanuelle' films. She isn't typically beautiful, she isn't even the prettiest actress in most of her erotic films! But she has an innocence about her and a sexual hunger that has driven a lot men wild over the course of her career.

But! This is an enjoyable erotic little piece of fluff but at times you wish it was a bit of a harder version of soft core porn. They don't spend nearly enough time on the love scenes and frequently cut away when things are just getting interesting. But I did like the mysterious Orient setting, the acupuncture scene and the bit of animation that Sylvia watches on one of those old fashioned movie machines. You will too. This is probably best viewed at home in bed with a young lady friend if you catch my drift and I think you do...

I was first introduced to this and other 'Emmanuelle' films in the early days of Cinemax (or 'Skin-emax', as we used to call it) and other pay-cable channels that started featuring soft-core porn after midnight on the weekends. In the early 80s--when the government was cracking down on pornography and the market for direct-to-video softcore porn had yet to be plumbed--cable outlets like Cinemax had few options for 'dirty movies' that didn't cross the hardcore threshold other than the small brace of adult films passing themselves off as 'European art-house' cinema to American audiences during the mid-to-late 70s. Other examples include Lady Chatterley's Lover (also starring Kristel, in an adaptation that would surely have humiliated poor D. H. Lawrence), Felicity, and Melody in Love, but the Emmannuelle franchise opened the proverbial floodgates (the title character in 'Felicity'--another story about a young woman on an adventure of sexual self-discovery in the far east--is seen reading the novel on which 'Emmannuelle' is based while traveling by plane to Bangcok).

As has been amply examined, the 'Emmannuelle' films are burdened with ponderous, annoying pretentiousness, and the audience must sit through way too much boring down-time between sex scenes that tend to tease more than satisfy. In this sense, 'Emmanuelle 2' and its ilk aren't bad for 'getting in the mood,' but compared to even the soft-core porn of today, these films are quaint. But they are fascinating as period pieces, and they are very sensual and erotic when compared to the rather mechanical and listless banging together of surgically enhanced bodies that dominates the adult film market today. Sylvia Kristel is no actress (apparently, she was so bad that her dialogue was overdubbed by another actress in the first 'Emmannuelle' film), and she is not the most beautiful woman ever to get naked in front of a camera, but this is part of her appeal: she has the face and body of a real woman, and she seems genuinely turned on (in that vaguely-detached, dreamy European way) by what she's doing.

But what a nostalgia trip! Sylvia Kristel introduced so many horny young boys with pay cable to the joys of sex in foreign locales and strange places. The concept of two women making love to each other was completely unknown to me before I met Emmanuelle! I can't help but laugh thinking back to how much of my sexual education I owe to the Emmanuelle films and the other naughty Euro-trash skin-flicks Cinemax kept in heavy rotation throughout the 80s. Mom and Dad were way too uptight and repressed to fill me in--thank goodness cable television was there to explain everything.

The second Emmanuelle movie is set in Hong Kong instead of Thailand, it is less provocative than the first and looks rather like a travel company's advertising clip. The story seems to be a random collection of impressions, it doesn't really have a beginning or a conclusive end. This may sound a bit negative so far, but despite the lack of dramatic action, it still is a movie I love to watch again and again. It's the only movie Francis Giacobetti ever directed, so maybe he didn't have much experience with actors, but he sure knew how to make pictures look great. Part 2 may well have the best musical score (by Francis Lai). One of the three masseuses in the steaming hot bath scene is the stunning Laura Gemser who'd become "Black Emanuelle" for a whole bunch of pictures. I voted 7/8/6/4/6/7 for the six cinema films of the series.

A must for Sylvia Kristel fans although not as hot as the original one she starred in. Also a chance to see Laura Gemser as the masseuse bearing a striking resemblance to Barbara Carrera, before Laura went on to do the Emmanuelle series herself.

If you want to watch a decent erotic movie that your girlfriend will not slap you in the face for making her watch half way through, buy this.

It's a far better movie than the first, which was pretty dull in places. This one wallows in wild abandon, and carries a feminist message - whatever the men can do, Emmanuelle can do better, and far ruder. In one scene after a long build-up in which you think she is going to plead with a handsome bloke for sex, she waits for him to do the asking. Then tells him where to get off.

One of Alex Cox's favourite movies - Emmanuelle 2 has strong sex for a soft core happening, is genuinely erotic, has good acting and some surreal moments (the animated movie, the guy wandering around with bits of a plane, the man in the locker room with all the tattoos) ..yep - you name it and you'll probably find it here. Even the addictive, romantic piano-led music is better this time around.

Sylvia Kristel gives a great performance - she is the star, easily and by a long way. Come on - this film is good, not smut. Though it has some smut if you want. Just watch with subtitles, not dubbed. PLEASE!