THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
1974. A few months after the death of Georges Pompidou, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing allows the erotic film emmanuel, Directed by photographer Just Jaeckin, it was released through normal channels, with a ban on under-18s. On 26 June of that year, there were endless queues on the Grands Boulevards, cinemas ran out of film reels, and couriers rushed to deliver them… More than 9 million spectators came to see Sylvia Kristel’s naked adventures; there would be more than 45 million worldwide. emmanuelwith its chic eroticism and exotic atmospheres, It will remain on display for thirteen years on the Champs-Élysées.
Fifty years later and seven years after the start of #metoo, the idea of making a remake or a “film inspired by” was a stimulating question: how to transform the most famous female object in cinema into a lover of eroticism? But by making it our mission to eliminate male gauze (the “male gaze” as conceptualized by British director Laura Mulvey in 1975) in favor of the female gaze, Audrey Diwan’s feature film uses a series of clichés. While the choice of Noémie Merlant (a charismatic actress with an international career, also a director) and a direction inspired would have been enough to reverse the trend and destroy rape culture, the scenario meets the specifications of modern women, inviting the viewer to play the game of the seven mistakes.
Search for enjoyment
The former Emmanuelle, expatriated housewife, “soft and smooth like a stone”dedicated to everything, she is now single, holds a high position in a hotel company, travels for work, chooses her lovers and lovers, runs off to the lowlands on her own initiative and closely courts a man who flees from physical love and escapes from it. The narrative issues end up falling into a not very exciting human resources dimension when the heroine realizes that she is being manipulated by her male superiors.
The big challenge was elsewhere. How to create sex scenes in an erotic film today? In recent years, some attempts have focused on modesty and cunnilingus to make the heightened desire in women perceptible. Audrey Diwan’s approach is, on the other hand, an erotic thriller, which places the suspense in the search for pleasure. In other words, each sex sequence reads like a crime scene and the motive has changed sides in favour of Emmanuelle. But this attractive bias, which will probably give its feminist side to Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel at the origin of the adaptations, suffers from a lack of lightness essential to the erotic game. Music, lighting, dialogue, decoration (a five-star hotel in Hong Kong), permanent languor, everything seems taken seriously to explain to us the basics: that an object of desire can also be a subject.
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