Emmanuelle is now showing in select cinemas nationwide.
Movies like Emmanuelle are challenging to write about, even for the most seasoned of film critics. We critics tend to watch about 200 new releases a year, and many are bad pictures. But even the worst movies can be fun to write about if they cause a visceral reaction; see my reviews of Megalopolis or 2023’s Super Mario. The problem with Emmanuelle isn’t that it’s as poorly made as those titles – it isn’t. Its problem is that it’s painfully dull, an attribute which is arguably worse.
Noemie Merlant of Portrait of a Lady on Fire fame plays a quality controller named Emmanuelle, although from what I can recall, her name is never spoken in the film. Sharp and strict in equal measure, Emmanuelle has been sent to Hong Kong to review the Rosefield Hotel, a luxurious destination for wealthy travellers and business folk. The manager is Margot (Naomi Watts), who runs the place like clockwork. This makes things awkward as Emmanuelle’s higher-ups are fishing for an excuse to fire Margot.
Not wanting to go through with this unfair demand, Emmanuelle is also searching for a lost pleasure – having perhaps never truly experienced genuine pleasure. The script suggests her motivations and desires but rarely expands on them more than cursory glances. She has numerous sexual exploits with the hotel guests – the opening scene sees her join the mile-high club – but she doesn’t feel any connection. That is until she crosses paths with Kei (Will Sharpe), a guest whom even the hotel knows little about. Intrigued by him, the film details Emmanuelle’s efforts to find out more about Kei, all while trying to do her job as well as she can, given the circumstances.
One can be forgiven for seeing some potential here. Emmanuelle is a reboot of a divisive series of erotic French films from the 1970s based on novels of the same name. Labelled as both feminist and misogynistic in equal measure, they nonetheless served as an exploration of pleasure and agency from a female perspective, something modern audiences are perhaps more receptive to than those in the 70s. Furthermore, Emmanuelle is the sophomore feature for director Audrey Diwan, the woman behind 2021’s tough but riveting Golden Lion winner Happening. Diwan co-writes the script with Rebecca Zlotowski, who wrote and directed the compelling Other People’s Children. Both films were fundamentally about female experiences, as was the original Emmanuelle. There is plenty of talent on both sides of the camera, with complex source material laying fertile ground for, at the very least, an intriguing feminist character study.
However, there is no real throughline to the plot or characterisation – only underdeveloped implications. When Emmanuelle first spots Kei, she asks the hotel staff, including the CCTV operator, about him, showcasing a clear interest in him. But in juggling this with her quality controller duties and her bouts of sex with strangers, Kei seems to disappear for large chunks of the story. He’s an anomaly in the most lethargic definition of the word. Meanwhile, other characters, played by Jamie Campbell Bower and Chacha Huang, seem to come and go on the whims of the plot.
Not helping is the cumbersome dialogue, with these numerous characters discussing pleasure, often to graphic detail, in ways that are so matter-of-fact that the conversations are awkward and stagnant rather stimulating. This includes a direct discussion between Emmanuelle and Kei in which the scene is shot through one continuous, unbroken midshot for several minutes. Perhaps the aim was to normalise conversations about sex – in itself a noble idea – but why did they have to present this in such a tedious manner?
It feels like the film is juggling too many plot points or broad ideas, resulting in a disjointed and unengaging story. On paper, Emmanuelle is an interesting character. She desires true pleasure and feels as though it’s an experience rarely found despite the abundance of lust in places like hotels. Given that the original Emmanuelle was a bored housewife and this Emmanuelle is a successful employee, there’s clearly an effort to seem more overtly feminist. But beyond her desire for better sex, there isn’t much else to her. Her past isn’t really explored, and her desire for a better connection is hampered by her own cageyness. Even her name would be questionable without the title. The film appears to be using ambiguity to form the thematic substance, but the results are so ambiguous that they seem non-existent.
What it amounts to is a slow, meandering compilation of hotel procedures and pseudo-psychological balderdash, occasionally interrupted by an equally unstirring sex scene. The opulent production design and the use of shadows during a particularly stormy night at the hotel add some degree of atmosphere to the picture. Merlant does her best with the material by imbuing the seemingly imposing figure of Emmanuelle with a buried sense of vulnerability. But it isn’t enough to sustain any kind of captivation with what’s on screen, even for the most depraved or voyeuristic of audience members. It’s just shy of two hours, and you feel every minute of its runtime.
The best erotic features – think Luis Benuel’s Belle De Jour – have their carnal attractions but are fundamentally about fantasy, humanity and how desire affects our character. This new reimagining of Emmanuelle aspires to do the same but seems remarkably timid in approach, resulting in a snoozefest rather than a sensation. All the creatives involved are admirable talents who will go on to do better work. But, to end on a somewhat crude note, there isn’t so much fire in the loins with Emmanuelle – more a weak candle already nearing the end of its wick.
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