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‘Emmanuelle’ Review: Audrey Diwan’s Brave Attempt To Revive A Dated Softcore Classic Leaves A Lot To Be Desired – San Sebastian Film Festival
In the Noémie Merlant-starring Emmanuelle, Audrey Diwan's brave attempt to revive a dated erotic classic leaves a lot to be desired.
It’s a surprise to find out that director Audrey Diwan had never seen the original Emmanuelle — a gauzy soft-porn feature that got le tout France hot and bothered when it was allowed to be shown in normal cinemas in 1974 — before she was approached to do this remake, which opens the San Sebastian Film Festival in Competition. The film’s feminist credentials are going to be questioned to hell and back, but Diwan and her co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski deserve recognition for having effectively sectioned the notion of pleasure away from pleasing or pursuing men; Emmanuelle’s gradual thaw is a solipsistic process of self-referential intimacy. Through one of The Eye’s security cameras, we might see this absurdly overstated hotel as a Cronenbergian netherworld, full of patisserie and exotic flowers that bloom and then, like tired metaphors, duly droop: a capsule of late capitalism.
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