Emmanuelle

There is a whole raft of French 1970ies porn movies, and while a surprising number of them take place in beautiful French châteaus -- and their less picturesque cellars -- and are set to la-la-music that would bore the pants off Enya, quite a few of them are rather good, actually -- and really filthy.

Here we have the movie that started it all, and yet I was disappointed. Granted, it's beautifully photographed, and the sex scenes pack a lot of sizzle, but the rest was lame and shallow. Emmanuelle is a young woman who -- you guessed correctly -- wants to explore her sexuality. What I had to accomplish singled-handedly in the grubby furtivity of our garden shed with the bra pages from the Sears catalogue, she can have a go at with the cream of beautiful French actresses and all the Oriental totty they couldn't beat off with a soiled stick in beautiful Thailand. And in a squash court. You'd think the permutations were endless, but what it boils down to is a long alternation of heady talk (maybe my French isn't good enough, but I thought it was all gibberish) followed up by breathy sex scenes (which are strictly softcore, by the way). Maybe I'm the exception from the rule here, but I don't only watch a movie such as this for the sex scenes, I actually do care about the rest of the movie.

The story disintegrates further when Emmanuelle, after two encounters with random men and a romance with a younger girl and an older woman, inexplicably shacks up with a grubby old man, and reaches its absolute low point when he subjects her to gang rape -- which is all the more revolting because it is filmed in wonky ouh-ah soft focus.

"Emmanuelle" is an elegant, excellently photographed movie, but too often rolls in a syrupy pretension…

It is about a young, French woman who joins her husband in Bangkok… There much of Emmanuelle's allure is that she isn't shy about her body, or even afraid to engage in sexual activity in semipublic places…

There are a number of rousing, lesbian meetings very typical of French cinema, coupled with encounters with handsome, sensitive men who enjoy superficial lovemaking… The film really deals in sensual images and an over-blown, continuous repeating of its erotic philosophy… There is sensual intimacy between Emmanuelle and the other women that is rare in the cinema…

My favorite moment when teen-ager Christine Boisson comes upon the nude Sylvia Kristel asleep… Without embarrassment, she leans forward and unusually caresses gently and affectionately Emmanuelle's breast with her finger

Going into this film, the only thing that I was really worried about was that it might be boring. It's not that I particularly have anything against pornography; but what's taboo now and what was taboo over three decades ago are different things, and besides that; you can only watch people having sex for so long before it begins to get dull. However, I was wrong; the film isn't boring, and while the focus is usually on sex; there actually is a story, and it actually is quite interesting! The film is unlikely to appeal to people that are interested in the more perverted side of sex as the film doesn't feature anything above lesbian sex, but the tender way that the story is presented as well as the French style give it a very erotic feel throughout. The plot, as you might expect, focuses on the character 'Emmanuelle', a young woman that lives with her husband; an older man, in Bangkok. They share a sort of teacher-pupil relationship, and they're also very liberal where adultery is concerned, as neither one cares too much about the other's antics with other people.

This film inspired a barrage of slightly less tasteful sequels, as well as a range of Italian films, many of which were directed by sleaze God Joe D'Amato. I don't think the filmmakers intended Emmanuelle to be associated so closely with sleaze, and actually at times; it doesn't really feel like a porn film; more of a drama with sex. I've got no idea how many taboos this film broke upon it's release over three decades ago, but the fact that it doesn't really break many today does it a favour where class is concerned as the film never feels too dirty, and this bodes well with the high class of the lead characters and setting. Sylvia Kristel takes the lead role, and is believable as a sexually naive young woman. She is joined by a number of eye-pleasing actresses, including Christine Boisson and Marika Green, and all get to take their clothes off in several scenes. The settings in which it all takes place are pleasing also, and the film is of a much higher class than a lot of nowadays porn. I'm surprised that Emmanuelle still has a notorious reputation, as it's only soft-core at best; but it's definitely worth seeing, if only to see how much things have changed!

This film is loosely based on the erotic art novel by Emmanuelle Arsan.

The fact that it was directed by Just Jaeckin means that it is the best of the Emmanuelle series, and makes the others look like mere skin flicks, which I think they probably are anyway.

Sadly, in Britain, the censors, in an effort to save the British public from themselves, have hacked a few scenes out of it, including a "smoking" scene in a nightclub and a rape scene towards the end of the film.

Sylvia Kristel seems ideally cast as the protagoniste. Others have called her innocent, but this is not the case: she is not so innocent, but becomes even less so, as her adventures increase her learning and experience.

Compared with the novel, the sam-lo scenes are not so well done, and the Mario character is a bit tacky, otherwise the film is well done. Emmanuelle's encounter with Bee is better than the book. Not so good are one or two of the simulated sex scenes; they look pretty phony.

This film was exceedingly popular at the time it was released, and has lasted the test of time, even if some of the clothes have not.

The biggest cinema surprise hit of 1975, based on a book by Emmanuelle Arsan, made Dutch model Sylvia Kristel a famous actress. The first thing you'll notice is that over 30 years later, the fascination with the exotic is still strong. It was worth going to Thailand and present the real thing instead of shooting "Asian" scenes in a park in Spain or Italy like many other European film crews did at the time. And it surely is one of the very few erotic films where you have to pay attention to the dialogs. It was important to explain the bizarre idea of "freedom" which the scandalous novel had introduced - arguably a two-edged sword. It is said that dependency is humiliating, but aren't scenes like when Emmanuelle is given as a "prize" to the Thai boxer even more humiliating? Easy to see why the movie stirred up discussions - which made even more people want to watch it. The ambiguity of this "freedom" in "Emmanuelle" thus was used for marketing. In her autobiography "Undressing Emmanuelle", Kristel recalls one scene with real horror: near the end, when she is raped by the opium smoker. The young man didn't understand a word of what she or the director said, so he just grabbed her. Sylvia's disgust is visible, and if the sequels hadn't been softer, she probably wouldn't have made them. The first Emmanuelle film still was experimenting with both visual style and a provocative attitude; it may have created a certain formula even though it didn't completely obey its rules, since it was rather the more gentle and glossy second Emmanuelle film which perfected the formula. I voted 7/8/6/4/6/7 for the six cinema films of the series.