Emmanuelle

The good: beautiful locations, often great cinematography and the film mostly has a great atmosphere (reminded me a bit of Lost in Translation). For its style alone, I'd give it a 7/10

The rest however is pretty bad. No character depth or development, pointless and often involuntarily funny dialogue, which makes the scenes that are supposed to be erotic quite dull And also: hardly any story

If you're looking for a stylishly made movie with no substance that gives you a good laugh from time to time because of its ridiculous dialogue and logic, then you'll at least be entertained.

But from a holistic point of view, I can't give it more than 4/10.

Too scary for Emmanuelle. Rating is overrated, I give it a 2*. 36-year-old actress. Kristel was 21-22 at the time of the first movie. I won't talk about attractiveness, it's a matter of taste, but at least you could have picked someone closer in type for the plot. "It used to be better"? I guess so.

The casting is as lame as possible. All attempts to shoot "by the book" after that are useless about completely. Absolutely. The image of Emmanuelle is not formed in any way. Of course, a new movie production of a beautiful novel has long been relevant. But something like this is better not to be filmed at all. Better nothing than this bad.

How the director who made Happening (2021), a great and tense French movie with strong directing and writing, comes next with a pretentious and tedious experience with Emmanuelle is baffling to me.

Emmanuelle is based on the French erotic series that has a famous reception from the past due to its erotic nature and style. Erotic films are challenging especially trying to combine story, character and sexual themes together without feeling tedious. It has worked but this movie, simply doesn't.

Despite some great camerawork and production designs throughout, unfortunately, it's pointless narrative and characters with barely depth or development makes it a tedious and unwilling experience. Many of the erotic moments and direction felt aimless and messy, which makes more of a bore rather then investment.

The performances from Noémie Merlant and Naomi Watts are trying. I love both of these actresses but they are stuck with a script that fails to give them really anything. I have to believe Watts must have a really bad agent because her talents have been wasted with bad movies these past years. Cause it's a shame since she deserves so much better.

With laughable dialogue and poor structure, it makes a miserable experience.

This is a decidedly darker take in style and substance than the original. The cinematography is darker; where the original was mostly outdoors in the lush yellow sunshine of Bangkok, this version is all shadows and dark interiors. The characters are darker, too, more silent and secretive.

Noémie Merlant, while lovely, is sharper and more angular than Sylvia Kristel, and lacking in Kristel's pure, innocent beauty. She tends to play the part much less open and expressive, adding to the mystery.

The secondary and peripheral characters are mostly undeveloped. Naomi Watts is totally wasted in a very minor role, and no one else seems up to the task of becoming an important part of the story. This version also lacks the other beautiful bodies that populated the original. The nudity, such as it is, is far less copious and quite a bit less explicit, making the sexuality of the character almost a sidelight of her personality, rather than an important feature of the story.

For my taste, there's a whole lot more to like in the original, from Sylvia Kristel's stunning beauty, to the lush tropical scenery, to the beautiful bodies filling so many of the scenes. If you aren't going to make it better, why bother to remake it?

Whoever decided to let Audrey Diwan direct and destroy this nostaligic franchise needs to rather donate the production money to animal welfare.

This movie has nothing in common with the other movies in the franchise and labors on and on with infinite reels of redundant dialogue.

I am happy the franchise has been rebooted but please can they hand the movie back into the hands of a man to make and Audrey Diwan is better suited to directing " Grass is green let's watch it grow" Perhaps the moviemakers should spend some time watching the original movies to better understand what made this franchise actually premiere in movie theatres at one point.

Noemie Merlant was not badly cast, she did her best to bring sexuality into the movie but there was nothing to work with.

No idea what Naomi Watts was doing in this movie.