‘Emmanuelle (2024)’ Review
Stars: Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang, Anthony Wong, Harrison Arevalo | Written by Emmanuelle Arsan, Audrey Diwan, Rebecca Zlotowski | Directed by Audrey Diwan
Back in 1974, the original Emmanuelle was something of a cause celebre, a French soft-core erotic drama that became a huge crossover hit, inspiring multiple sequels and bestowing instant fame on its eponymous star, Sylvia Kristel. Now it’s been remade, with French star Noemie Merlant in the lead, and given a 21st century spin by director Audrey Diwan, the acclaimed director of 2021’s Golden Lion-winning abortion drama Happening. However, whatever Diwan and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski were intending with this supposedly erotic dalliance, it does not appear to have penetrated, so to speak.
Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) plays Emmanuelle, a high-flying quality controller for a chain of luxury hotels. She’s first introduced having a spot of mile-high fun with a fellow passenger in an airplane toilet, in a nod to the original film. Thereafter she meets Margot (Naomi Watts), the manager of an outrageously high class establishment in Hong Kong, where Emmanuelle has been secretly tasked with finding a reason to have her fired.
A large part of the film is given over to Emmanuelle just doing her job, sampling the hotel’s facilities (timing how long it takes a staff member to bring her a glass of water) and then grading them in voice notes on a traffic light scale. In her downtime, she amuses herself by having sex with various people in and around the hotel, including a couple that seduce her in the bar (“Excuse me, are you French?”) and Emily Bronte-quoting Zelda (Chacha Huang), an escort who plies her trade around the hotel pool, while also studying for an English literature degree.
However, the figure that most intrigues Emmanuelle is Kei (Will Sharpe), an enigmatic regular guest who apparently never sleeps at the hotel and is always off doing something mysterious. The film seems to be building towards the pair of them eventually connecting, but that’s not exactly what happens.
Part of the problem with the film is that there’s so little to it that it’s hard to tell what attracted Diwan, Merlant and Zlotowski to the project in the first place. If it was intended as a reverential piece of twenty-first century softcore, then the sex is frankly rather tame and disappointing. If the idea was to give Emmanuelle herself more of a feminist upgrade, then fair enough – the remake removes her tedious husband from the original film (and the source novel) and gives her a self-sufficient job, but…is that it?
From the way Emmanuelle plays out, it feels like it was intended as a journey of erotic discovery (as was the original), in part because Merlant’s Emmanuelle doesn’t really seem to enjoy any of her sexy encounters, employing the same slightly bored facial expression throughout. Without giving too much away, this changes with the film’s (and Emmanuelle’s) climax, suggesting that she has finally found a type of sexual fulfilment that works for her, but if that’s the case, the film doesn’t do enough to suggest her boredom or curiosity or even general state of mind beforehand, so the audience is basically left to fill in the gaps for themselves. Maybe that’s the point.
On the plus side, the film is very -ahem- handsomely mounted, with some impressive production design work. Similarly, Merlant does the best she can with the limitations of the script, though Watts is oddly wasted, and if there was meant to be a sexually charged scene between the two Naomis, then somebody evidently thought better of it. As for rising British star Will Sharpe, this will add to his growing reputation for versatility, if nothing else, seeing as he’s already proven himself adept at both comedy and drama.
Ultimately, considering the erotic pedigree of the original film, this has to be considered something of a disappointment. It has a degree of curiosity value, but when it comes to delivering the goods, it barely titilates, let alone satisfies. Unless luxury hotel interiors are your thing, in which case, this movie has your name all over it.
** 2/5
Emmanuelle is in cinemas now.