According to some reviewers, it hasn’t worked. Variety writes: “Saying something freshly substantive about female desire while honouring the film’s defining spirit of vapid, diaphanous horniness is a tricky, potentially unworkable brief: Audrey Diwan’s inert, frequently frigid new film opts to do neither.”
In France, reviews have been mixed. “The staging is brilliant, polished, and deliberately cold,” writes French daily Le Figaro. “It shines but remains cold… Obviously, the goal was to transform Emmanuelle into a feminist icon. Funny idea.” But the French Huffington Post is more positive about the film’s objectives, writing: “Emmanuelle is no longer the target of all desires, the hypersexualised woman-object. She is an active subject. The object of her own desire precisely.”
There’s also been disappointment that the new film isn’t in French, when the last one succeeded globally in that language. But Eve Jackson still believes French viewers will be watching it “out of interest”.
“It’s got an internationally well-known cast, Audrey Diwan is a respected film-maker, and I think everyone is curious to know, ‘can this female director supplant the male gaze on this iconic female character Emmanuelle?'” she says. “I’m not sure. I still think because it’s an erotic film and it’s got that iconic title, that in France, the name alone has 50 years of history as an erotic sex symbol – for men.”
Emmanuelle (2024) is on release now in France. It will be released globally at a later date.
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