Emmanuelle 2 l'antivergine

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!

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.

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.

The sequel for the groundbreaking Emmanuelle welcomes back the gorgeous Sylvia Kristel (complete with a Kimberly Ryan hairstyle) in her second sexer. This time Emmanuelle and her husband (played by Umberto Orsini, a man I wish that I could look like) visit more of the Orient and Indonesia. Again, Emmanuelle (who's more confident about herself and her sexuality) has the time to have "philisophical discussions" wherever she goes, whether it would be in the bathtub, watching a microfilm movie short, in a locker room, a brothel, or getting acupuncture! Once again, we'll get to see the rituals and customs of the countries of the Far East, the same song being played during the "philisophical discussions", and a PYT thing who wants to learn from her (instead of the PYT teaching her). Once again I've seen the French and dubbed versions, and this time Kristel is dubbed by a more confident sounding woman, the voice of Emmanuelle from the first one seems to have been given to PYT Anna-Maria (Catherin Rivet).

All in all, almost as good as the first. BTW, one of the masseuses in the parlour Emmanuelle, Jean, and Anna-Maria visits is played by the gorgeous Laura Gemser, an Indonesian actress who would later play Emmanuelle in the series after Kristel decided to try her luck in more mainstream films in America.

"Emmanuelle 2" is an interesting relic of its era. That's not to say it's not explicit enough (it is, for a soft-core porn film), just that it has that decidedly pre-AIDS attitude about casual sexual encounters with multiple partners. The sex scenes deliver the goods, but the lack of a discernible plot may prove tiresome for some. This is a movie best enjoyed by using your fast-forward button to get to the scenes for which you rented the film in the first place (but you probably could have figured that out by yourself). (**1/2)