Because Audrey Diwan directed Happening, a movie that honestly addressed abortion, it’s likely her remake of the 1974 softcore classic, which launched countless sequels and copies, will be described as a feminist take on the subject; but even if it was directed by a man it had its feminist defenders at the time, people who said that the title character owned her sexual agency and was therefore forward thinking. Having never seen the original I have nothing to add, but Diwan’s version is pretty boring, especially in the titillation department. (To be fair, it wasn’t her project. She was hired.) The sex is mostly of the imaginary kind, meaning Emmanuelle (Noemie Merlant) often fantasizes about it, thus conjuring up ideal sexual encounters to her own tastes. But much of the sensuality is submerged into the suggestive dialogue, which is in strained English even though Emmanuelle herself is French.

The setting is Hong Kong, more specifically a luxury hotel that Emmanulle is “inspecting” for the company that owns it. She occasionally checks in with the hotel’s manager (Naomi Watts), with whom she seems to have some kind of beef, probably because that’s her job, but the business talk effectively stops whatever passes for a plot dead in its tracks since the screenwriter, Rebecca Zlotowski, doesn’t betray much knowledge of the economics of running a hotel, especially one as self-consciously upscale as this one. She does manage to inject sexual innuendo into almost every conversation, though, including one about disaster management, and when champagne corks pop you get the idea of just how limited the filmmakers’ ideas are about conveying pleasure. Are they trying to intellectualize the original material, which, after all, started out as a novel? Or are they making fun of it? In any case, Emmanuelle seems to have the hots for one resident, a vaguely Japanese civil engineer named Kei (Will Sharpe), who picks up on her double entendres and treats them as philosophical puzzles rather than come-ons. 

In the end, Emmanuelle the movie is more about money than it is about sex, though I’m not sure that was the intention unless Diwan, after realizing what she’d gotten herself into, decided to sabotage the whole thing from the inside; meaning, it’s not a bad movie, only a pointless one. 

In English and French. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Emmanuelle home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Chantelouve-Rectangle Productions-Goodfellas-Pathe Films