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James Mottram

3/5 stars
The opening movie at this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain, Emmanuelle is a chic contemporary take on the cult 1974 soft-core porn film that starred Sylvia Kristel as the wife of a diplomat who travels to Bangkok for some erotic adventures.
Relocated to Hong Kong, where it was partly shot, this reboot is the first movie directed by French filmmaker Audrey Diwan since she made Happening, the stirring abortion drama that took the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021.
Episodic by nature, the film stars Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) in the title role as a French-couture-clad high-flyer who works for a group that owns luxury hotel chains.


When we first see her, she is silently engaged in a tryst with a business traveller in the first-class bathroom of an airliner. Both coolly detached and adventurous, Emmanuelle as played by Merlant appears inscrutable and almost unknowable.
“You seem to be a stickler for the rules but you don’t always follow them,” she is told.
More than once she joins a security officer known as The Eye (Anthony Wong Chau-sang), who sits in front of a bank of monitors watching not only the hotel guests, but also the staff.
One of the most interesting aspects of Diwan’s version is this peek inside the world of high-class hotels, as the staff, led by Naomi Watts’ manager, discuss the needs of its elite clients, including Kei (Will Sharpe), a mystery man who checks into the hotel but never sleeps there.

Kei isn’t the only customer who catches Emmanuelle’s eye; commercials director Sir John (Jamie Campbell Bower) and Zelda (Chacha Huang), a literature student, also arouse her.
Much of the sexual content is quite deliberately soft, a nod to the original, perhaps, with Diwan keeping it classy and reserved. One scene sees Merlant photograph herself and tease her own body with an ice cube; another sees her and Huang pleasure themselves in front of each other.
Shooting some scenes through blinds and windows lends the film an almost voyeuristic feel, and Diwan uses Hong Kong well, especially in a huge storm sequence as the rain cascades down and floods the hotel.

While there is something opaque about Merlant’s elusive turn as Emmanuelle – her motives for all these sexual conquests are never fully explored – Diwan paints an intriguing picture of an independent, modern woman on a journey of discovery.
Likely to appeal most to those that enjoyed the Fifty Shades of Grey films, this new version of Emmanuelle is more tasteful than titillating.
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Noémie Merlant is inscrutable as Emmanuelle in this Hong Kong-set update of the cult 1974 erotic film that’s more tasteful than titillating


Noémie Merlant is inscrutable as Emmanuelle in this Hong Kong-set update of the cult 1974 erotic film that’s more tasteful than titillating.


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Review | Emmanuelle movie review: Hong Kong-set erotic drama a chic reboot of 70s soft-core classic

Noémie Merlant is inscrutable as Emmanuelle in this Hong Kong-set update of the cult 1974 erotic film that’s more tasteful than titillating