Emmanuelle: A Flaccid But Fascinating Remake Of The Erotic French Classic
| Audrey Diwan's Emmanuelle is a stylish slow-burn that fumbles through the fog of female desire. Manik Sharma writes. | “I’VE RUN OUT OF DESIRE,” a character quietly declares in a sequence from Emmanuelle . It’s a scene that summarises — and serves as the intersection of — this adaptation’s distracting auteur lens which frequently collides with its casual exposure of the female form. Like a softcore film that delays the money shot to earn the credibility of getting there. A confection that has arrived by way of thought, mood, and some sort of artistic inclination. To which effect there is plenty here that demands discernment before disclosure. This adaptation shifts the base from Bangkok to Hong Kong, to the world of Wong Kar-wai, and though it produces cheap imitations of his realm, there is something beguiling about this mish-mash of narrative tones and whispery ennui. Stream the latest films and shows, with OTTplay Premium's Jhakaas monthly pack, for only Rs 249. | We begin the film with Emmanuelle, played by the picture-perfect Noémie Merlant, on her way to Hong Kong to evaluate the staff of an elite business hotel. On the flight in, she ravishes a stranger — in a spacious aircraft lavatory by the way — only to lose interest halfway through the act. The premise is set. Contrary to the original, this version of Emmanuelle might rope in some feminist spin to what was essentially a male fantasy. This woman has the attributes, the seductive gaze, the necessary abandon but she simply can’t get over the inertness of her body, the failure to feel what she can witness others feel. Her mind wheezes with curiosity, traipses around bushes, in search of something hidden and primal, only to return disappointed by what it unearths. How can pleasure be so universal? Also, why hasn’t it hit her yet? It’s like seeking sexuality, without the functional fork of choreography. Every step feels like a misstep. Even Emmanuelle’s sex talk is off-putting. | She arrives at the Rosefield Palace hotel, as the recently-appointed quality surveyor. Her subjects are the employees, the staff; this creates an opportunity for a scene-stealing performance from Naomi Watts as the hotel’s resident manager. But as is the nature of sexual overtures, Emmanuelle’s curiosity drives her up the infrastructural wedge that miscreants and mystics use as a portal for passage. Her subjects instead become the prostitute who operates around the hotel pool, a security guard who explains surveillance like it’s an act of personality assessment, and this mysterious engineer who builds dams (played by the quietly assured Will Sharpe). Our protagonist is intrigued, unsure of what it is that pulls her to these characters — their elusiveness, their passions, or the fact that they can commit to either. In one sequence, she joins the prostitute in a cramped boiler room to mime the act of self-gratification. “Do you ever feel pleasure?” she asks, to which the prostitute responds, “How could you not?”. Emmanuelle loses her in the space between the two, her gaze wobbly, uninterested. Maybe pleasure is not for her. Maybe female sexuality is far more complicated than the submissive tone most men apply to it. Everything — from her countless backless dresses to her sexual intrigue — suggests a testosterone-shaped arc. Except, Director Audrey Diwan holds back. Penetration is where the journey perhaps begins. The finish line, possibly, isn’t even the point. | The problem with Diwan’s film, its eerie soundtrack notwithstanding, is that the grim visual language doesn’t quite earn the depth of its characters. Our protagonist stumbles through dark corridors, stares across windows, is stuck in a hotel for the better part of the film, but can’t quite furnish the graph of a personality that has interests, other than the ones she can’t quite experience herself. Her job becomes an afterthought, her life outside of her curious shell a kind of dogma that is simply swept aside. The upgrade of making her an independent, self-reliant woman is overtaken by the awkward tonality of a hotel that could also serve as the site of many horrors. Is that the point? If it is, it’s unconvincing. As a consequence Emmanuelle, though seductive as a pastiche of female sexuality, feels rootless and plain-sighted. Lacking the unspecific energy of someone journeying inwards. She has her interests but none of them seem to necessarily tell us who she is. | Emmanuelle is a confusing mix of high-brow execution, collated with low-brow haste. It’s the rarest of rare mixes in modern cinema. The film has metaphors, a distinctly stifled tableau of sex scenes, and suppresses nudity to make its own muddled points. All of that must give, if not in terms of story then at least in the flesh and breath of a character who feels urgent to the milieu we live in today. That said, though futile in places, Emmanuelle is never not fascinating. Even the film’s reluctance to offer sex in service of exploration, done at a glacial pace, with chords collapsing into one another, offers a digression to newer territory. Some accidental, some hopefully predestined, but misunderstood. Isn’t that what sexuality is after all? Blurry, and never quite there. Emmannuelle is streaming on Lionsgate Play. | Like what you read? Get more of what you like. Visit the OTTplay website , or download the app to stay up-to-date with news, recommendations and special offers on streaming content. Plus: always get the latest reviews. Sign up for our newsletters. Already a subscriber? Forward this email to a friend, or use the share buttons below. | | | This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead. | | Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think it worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
hour on this. | | | Hindustan Media Ventures Limited,
Hindustan Times House, 18-20,
Second Floor, Kasturba Gandhi
Marg, New Delhi - 110 001, India | | | If you need any guidance or support along the way, please send an email to ottplay@htmedialabs.com . We’re here to help! | ©️2025 OTTplay, HT Media Labs. All rights reserved. | | | |
