Emmanuelle

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.

What an embarassment to the Emmannuelle collection of movies throughout history.

Anyone who has ever watched an Emmanuelle movie knows that it is about sensuality and eroticness above all.

This movie was filmed like it was some new advertisement for a women's perfume. Make of that what you will.

The biggest sin of all is the main casting. Unfortunately, Noémie Merlant while appears sexy and sultry at first, she just doesn't have the physical beauty to live up to the legendary Silvia Kristel.

The movie becomes more and more drab and boring as each scene comes and goes without much excitement.

Overall, for fans of T n A, this was also a colossal disappointment.

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.

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.