Rent Emmanuelle (1974)

Boring Erotic Drama - Emmanuelle review by GI

Viewed today it may seem very surprising that this was such a popular film when it was widely released. Even in the USA, a country that is notorious for its censorship of sex in mainstream cinema, this gained an uncut release mostly because it had been reportedly popular in Europe with women viewers. In 1974 there was no doubt that this was viewed as erotic cinema making the crossover from pornography and curiosity fuelled its box office success because this is a rather ridiculous, quite dull and somewhat childish film. It's not a film that goes anywhere near what porn was doing in the 70s (watch 1997s Boogie Nights for that). Emmanuelle is a French film that uses soft focus, an exotic location and oodles of female nudity in order to masquerade as something sincere. It's not, it's a poorly scripted idea of what the director, Just Jaeckin, seems to think women are all searching for. The narrative is simple, a beautiful and naive young women, Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel) joins her husband in Bangkok. He's all for letting her have her sexual freedom mainly because he wants his, but when she takes it he's not too pleased. Emmanuelle has indulged herself mostly with other women and hubby sends her off to Mario (Alain Cuny), a much older man, to teach her all about eroticism which involves the most unerotic sex you'll ever see! As a film that is supposedly about a woman's journey of sexual discovery this is nothing more than a postcard of Thailand with lots of breasts. It has its place in film history and it spawned a whole series but it can be dismissed today as a tasteless experiment.