Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection

Severotica Arsan

Saga Erotica - 
The Emmanuelle Collection
11 Disc Boxed Edition

Hi all, much like I did with my entry on Severin’s beautiful Al Adamson The Masterpiece Collection Blu Ray set (right here), I thought I’d finish up my recent season of Emmanuelle Arsan at NUTS4R2 reviews with a quick breakdown of some of the extras found on Severin Films’ beautiful Blu Ray collection, with links back to the reviews of the films in the set on the blog, a couple of lines about a few of the extras I’ve actually got around to watching plus, if you like, an index review at the end of all my reviews in this season. So you can use this page as a link page to some stuff and also maybe to understand why you might maybe want to pick up a copy of this set for yourself, while it’s still available.



EMMANUELLE
Disc 1 
UHD in two cuts with an audio commentary With film historian Elizabeth Purchell (Director's Cut Only)
French Trailer


Disc 2: Blu Ray contents as the above disc but also with the following special features.
A Slightly Scandalous Character – Interview With Actress Marika Green
Producing EMMANUELLE – Interview With Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
Filming EMMANUELLE – Interview With Camera Operator Robert Fraisse
Fabric & Fantasy: Costume As Character Development – Video Essay By Fashion And Costume Historian Elissa Rose
The Channel – Actress Liane Curtis On Her Mother, Dubbing Artist Paulette Rubinstein
    
Interview With Marayat Rollet-Andriane (aka Emmanuelle Arsan) On The Set Of THE SAND PEBBLES (1966)
This is a short, black and white, fairly standard interview with the lady herself doing promotion for the The Sand Pebbles (which I reviewed here). She reveals she has been signed to Fox for a number of pictures and she’s looking forward to making another film soon. Sadly, the only other Fox project she was involved in was an episode of The Big Valley and it was not until her role in Laure (reviewed by me here in another Severin edition) that she had any other experiences on a movie set.

The Joys Of Emmanuelle, Part 1 – Interviews With Star Sylvia Kristel, Director Just Jaeckin And Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
This is the first of a three part documentary directed by Severin co-owner, the great David Gregory and reveals all about the making of the film. How Kristel got involved almost by accident and then went for it because her boyfriend said nobody would be able to see it as, if they were doing the book, it would be uncertifiable. Also, the director of the movie tells about the day they all got arrested and spent a day in a Thai prison for filming in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, just why he didn’t want the ‘cigar smoking’ scene in the film, feeling that it would turn it into cheap, softcore pornography which is what he didn’t want for the movie. Also, the producer tells a story which I’ve heard a number of times on a number of movies in that, the film was so succesful that there weren’t enough prints to cope with the demand and so motorcyle couriers had to rush back and forth between cinemas, delivering each reel as it became free, from one cinema to another. 

French Trailer
U.S. Trailer

Disc 3: Blu-ray (Special Features)
Signed, Emmanuelle Arsan – Interview With Camille Moreau, Author Of Emmanuelle Arsan: Biography of a Pseudonym
Very much on the same page as me on my best guesses on who Emmanuelle Arsan really was, Arsan biographer Camille Moreau talks about the combined pseuedonym of their collaborative creation and also the use of the name by other writers, by the time they were putting the Emmanuelle magazine out in France (much like, I suspect, Michael Moorcock’s loan to many New Worlds writers of his Eternal Champion variant jerry Cornelius for a time). Not only is Moreau convinced the pseudonym was a collaboration by the wife and the husband (who was in the French resistance during the war, it turns out) but she also gives us her opinion that the rumours of Arsan’s alleged involvement with Steve McQueen while the two were making The Sand Pebbles were just that... a rumour (I’m still unsure myself, now I know what McQueen did directly after finishing that film... if anyone was running from somethign it was surely him at that point?). She also gives vent on her hatred of the use of the famous wicker chair to sell the movie versions as their iconography.

Interview With Director Just Jaeckin For FILMO TV
    
A Hard Look (2000) – TV Documentary By Filmmaker Alex Cox
Well it’s hard not to recommend anything directed by ALex Cox and this critical look at the first Emamanulle film, its impact on popular culture and the various cinematic strands it spawned is no exception. It also takes a very ‘ask the public’ approach to both the films and the sexuality it inspired in its audience. My one criticism is that, at some point, it must have had some captions explaining who the various talking heads were but, unfortunately, this print of the documentary has none. 

Emmanuelle In Ontario – Video Essay On The Canadian Censorship Battle By Journalist Eric Veillette
A short 'does what it says on the tin' documentary listing the banning, then unbanning but severely mutilated screenings of the film in Ontario in Canada. These censors are, like all of them seem to be, completely evil and should probably be destroyed. 



EMMANUELLE 2 (1975)
Disc 4: UHD (Film + Special Features) 
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Elizabeth Purchell And Filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat
International Trailer
U.S. Trailer

Disc 5: Blu-ray (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Elizabeth Purchell And Filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat
Audio Interview With Director Francis Giacobetti
Producing EMMANUELLE 2 – Interview With Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
Filming EMMANUELLE 2 – Interview With Cinematographer Robert Fraisse

Mondo Emmanuelle – Ethnography And Softcore With Dr. Jennifer Moorman, Assistant Professor Of Communication And Media Studies
One of the best extras in the set, for my money, Dr. Moorman looks at ethnography and anthropology and talks about what she calls the ‘porno-ethnographic colonising gaze’ of the Emmanuelle films and the way various peoples and cultures have been depicted in American and European cinema... starting off with Nanook Of The North from 1922 and taking us through with films like Mondo Cane in 1962 until she gets to the films featured in this set. This look starts off with The Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park in 1851 and the Chicago Worlds Fair from 1893 to demonstrate how the various cultures are represented in a posed way to live up to certain Western expectations.

Filming Report For Swiss TV

The Joys Of Emmanuelle, Part 2 – Interviews With Star Sylvia Kristel And Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
David Gregory’s second featurette covers Emmanuelle 2 and tells how the producer was told by the French board of censors that his film was definitely not pornographic. However, they wanted to make an example of it so they slapped it with an X certificate anyway. In response, the producer held a press conference and told the French people that he would not screen the film in its home country of France until that censorship decision was overturned... and he proceeded to release it to much success internationally instead. It took two years for the censorship decision to be overturned and so the release was delayed for two years in France. 

International Trailer
U.S. Trailer
Radio Spots

Disc 6: Soundtrack CD


GOODBYE EMMANUELLE (1977)
Disc 7: UHD (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Writer/Professor Of Modern Culture And Media Dr. Veronica Fitzpatrick
International Trailer
U.S. Trailer

Disc 8: Blu-ray (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Writer/Professor Of Modern Culture And Media Dr. Veronica Fitzpatrick
 Beyond Emmanuelle: Sylvia Kristel's Life And Career – Interviews With Jeremy Richey, Author Of Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol, And Leila Wimmer, Senior Lecturer In Film Studies At London Metropolitan University

Audio Erotica – The Music Of The Emmanuelle Series With Soundtrack Journalist Daniel Schweiger
A nice little extra. All I’m saying is... as always... if you want somebody to come in and talk about soundtracks, get Daniel Schweiger.


The Joys Of Emmanuelle, Part 3 – Interviews With Star Sylvia Kristel And Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
The third part of Gregory’s documentary comments on the third movie plus some of the bandwagon films which came out. Also, a lovely moment in one of the interviews where Sylvia Kristel shows us some of her paintings, which she exhibited in her gallery in Amsterdam. Nice to see.

International Trailer
U.S. Trailer
Radio Spots



I, EMMANUELLE (1969) 
The best film in the set I reckon but I just haven't had the time to watch any of the extras... sorry folks.

Disc 9: UHD (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Trailer

Disc 10: Blu-ray (Film + Special Features)
Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
A Director À La Française – Interview With Director Cesare Canevari
Memoirs Of Emmanuelle – Interview With Actress Erika Blanc
A Man For Emmanuelle – Interview With Actor Sandro Pizzochero
Protagonist And Subject – Video Essay By Filmmaker Carl Elsaesser
Concerning Emmanuelle – Archival Interview With Cesare Canevari
Trailer

Disc 11: Soundtrack CD

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection
 

Emmanuelle (2024)

Eyes Without A Gaze

Emmanuelle (2024)
Directed by Audrey Diwan
France/USA 2024
Pathe Zone B Blu Ray


Okay... I was so thrown by this anniversary ‘remake’ of Emmanuelle that I almost don’t know where to start and am unsure  as to whether I should completely condemn it or admit that some of the elements of the film work as their own thing... without having anything to do with the franchise it was supposed to be celebrating. I’ve seen some of the comments about this and can well understand the disappointment and vitriol aimed at this movie and, I think it’s because the film really is a sheep hiding in wolf’s clothing. I’ve also read some of the director’s rationale behind making this from a feminist perspective and her shift to ‘the female gaze’ as opposed to the male and making this film from a feminine point of view. 

So okay, before I throw up some merits I believe the film has, I need to address some of the things that are wrong with it because, it irks me that something which is supposed to fit in with the famous (and rightly notorious, if you’ve read my reviews of the books) property is so antiseptic in its outlook. 

So let’s first look at the director. This film came out 50 years after the famous 1974 adaptation and is therefore, one would assume, something made to mark that occasion. However, the director has gone on record saying she’s never seen the original film. Why do modern day movie makers somehow seem to think it’s impressive not to be familiar with the source of their creations... it just makes you seem like sloppy examples of cast and crew (the number of superhero actors and actresses who say they’ve never read a comic annoys me in a similar manner)? However, she was given Emmanuelle Arsan’s original novel to read and, honestly, apart from one (maybe two) scenes in the film... this is completely divorced from that novel too. 

I mean, Emmanuelle, as played here by Noémie Merlant, embodies none of the characteristics of the original character and, as importantly, the film misunderstands... I feel... the basic tenets of Marryat Rollett-Andriane (aka Emmanuelle Arsan) and her husband’s philosophies revolving around love and sex. The whole point of those novels is that the young Emmanuelle is married and she and her husband enhance, strengthen and maintain their bond by having sexual adventures (both apart and sometimes together) with other people. It’s about free love and the way sex can sometimes bring one closer to one’s other half (I’ve witnessed this effect in real life). Emmanuelle, as she is in the books and the first two movie adaptations, is a smart (but often naive), fun loving, joyful creature who is up for anything, mostly on her own terms and wed to a rich husband who can fund her playgirl lifestyle. 

In this modern incarnation, Emmanuelle is a fair bit older than the original character, is not married, has a job as a hotel inspector and, as the bitter cherry on the poison cake, while still being somewhat sexually adventurous (kinda) she’s stoic, aloof, distant, cold, mostly humourless and somewhat disconnected from humanity. This is not Emmanuelle in any way, shape or form. Both the spirit of the character and of the initial books/films is completely lost here. 

And as far as the dominant female gaze here... yes, I’m a bloke so I’m never going to be an authority on such things (or should even be warranted thoughts on the matter) but, I should point out that the original Emmanuelle certainly had her own agency and, especially in the case of the Black Emanuelle films, she was definitely a confident, feminist woman in a series of films which have been very much re-evaluated and recognised as such. So this new incarnation, which seems almost to reject Arsan’s spirit and ideas, just doesn’t seem to work for me. I mean, the film is not boring, as many people seem to suggest and it’s also not a bad movie (although certainly a very bad Emmanuelle movie) but if I were to actually believe this movie is a representation of what women want to see then, alas, my takeaway would be that women don’t really like sex and can take it or leave it. 

Also, there’s a bit more nudity than people are saying in the film but, not much (not even as much as the 1974 film and that was not exactly loaded with the female form) and many of the sex scenes are either clothed or executed without showing many, or oftimes any, sexual body parts of the participants. 

There are one, possibly two scenes that are reflective of the original novel. The movie opens with a version of the airline sex scene (but much tamer) which opened the book and was relocated to another part of the original movie (and also opened the first Black Emanuelle film if memory serves). It takes the form of a pre-title sequence but, I don’t think it’s all that strong an opening to the film, I would say. 

The other scene which may be an homage to the masturbation scene with Emmanuelle and the underage girl (13) in the book (and slightly less underage girl, 17, in the original film) is half recreated here with this film’s Emmanuelle and someone who turns out to be a female escort (if I understood it correctly). It feels like it’s almost there by accident or is just a passing, token homage, to be fair.

And that’s it. Now let me tell you what the film seems to be on its own terms...

Well, it’s beautifully shot with nice use of slow camera movement which is also used to highlight travelling cuts which bring back zooms in or out on the same scene in one fluid motion. The film tries to be erotic by using things like a visual montage of people rubbing things (such as cleaners wiping bannisters in the hotel run by Margot Parson, played by Naomi Watts) and I am assuming that this is an attempt to subliminally arouse the senses of the audience but, well, for me it just fell flat and didn’t move the blood or quicken the heart in the way it might be hoped (admittedly, this is apparently a deliberate tactic of the director... but then you just have nothing really happening so, why?). The film does tend to live in a voyeuristic world but, again, it has none of the carefree spirit of the original works.

I was especially on the alert after we see the lead taking a bath in her hotel room near the start of the film because, shortly after, in the very next scene, she informs somebody she has just taken a shower. Which is obviously a glaring continuity error and makes me think the bath scene maybe replaced the shower from an earlier version of the script but the scene straight after was not reshot to match up with the content of that footage. So, yeah, I was immediately on guard after this small moment. 

And I did kind of enjoy watching these bored and disillusioned people wandering about aimlessly in an upperclass, exclusive, rich person’s world and have meaningless conversations. Noémie Merlant’s almost deadpan performance is actually quite good, just completely wrong for Emmanuelle... but she’s playing her as it’s been written, not as a credible version of the original character. And I loved the score by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine which, alas, is not released as a standalone CD (no, seriously, don’t give me your stupid digital downloads, I want the proper, physical release please). I mean, it’s not the kind of score you’d expect or want in an Emmanuelle film but, as I think I’ve argued throughout this review, this really isn’t an Emmanuelle film and has none of that spirit about it anyway so, why not?

So, at the end of the day, it’s not a terrible film by any means but, it’s not an Emmanuelle movie (although I can see why some people, even those unfamiliar with the original works, would find this sluggish compared to whatever else they are watching). It’s almost like the director was handed the keys to the kingdom for the fiftieth anniversary and deliberately undermined the essence of the original and just wanted this to be a slap in the face of the male and female fans of the original (don’t forget, that original movie was released mainstream and was a popular ‘couples’ movie with a dominant female audience, from what I have heard). So, yeah, I’m guessing most people will take ot or more likely leave this incarnation but, it’s not completely without merit... just don’t judge it against your deserved expectations of the film, for sure. 

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection 

I, Emmanuelle

Erotic Breakdown

I, Emmanuelle
aka Io, Emmanuelle
aka A Man For Emmanuelle
aka Emmanuelle
Directed by Cesare Canevari
Italy 1968
Rofima Cinematografica
Severin Films Blu Ray
as part of their Saga Erotica Emmanuelle Collection

Warning: All the spoilers for this wonderful film. 

Wow. Just wow. 

Sometimes a Blu Ray label... and it seems @severinfilms are particularly adept at this... will put out a film that absolutely knocks your socks off, blows your mind and reminds you why you started partaking of ‘the cinematic arts’ in the first place. Which is what I, Emmanuelle did to me when I watched it but, to be honest, I was debating whether to make this review part of my Emmanuelle Arsan At NUTS4R2 strand of movies at all. And the simple reason for that is... it’s got absolutely nothing to do with Emmanuelle Arsan. 

However, I can see why Severin decided to include it as part of their Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection Blu Ray boxed set and so, since it’s such a good movie and it does have a very remote connection, I thought I’d include it here where it can get more exposure. And here’s why...

This film predates Emmanuelle (reviewed here) by five years and it wasn’t trying to bandwagon onto that movie... however, it was trying to band wagon onto the notoriety of Arsan’s original novel. Now, we’re all used to seeing Italians produce waves of knock offs around particular genres and also titles. I mean, how many spaghetti westerns which have absolutely nothing to do with Django include the name Django in their title? Hundreds, right? Well, here we have the Italians Django-ing Emmanuelle’s name onto the title of the film and calling their main character after her. But, in fact, it’s based on a short story called Disintegration ‘68, written by Graziella Di Prospero. And, I almost pity the man (or woman) in the street when this came out thinking they were walking into a sexy, erotic Emmanuelle movie because, although the film does deal with sex... it’s certainly not all that sexy and is a real downer of a movie, quite deliberately so, it seems to me. 

So the film starts with such a texturally swirling camera movement going in 360 degree circles that I initially thought there was something wrong with my Blu Ray copy, Then we get glimpses of the main star, Erika Blank, as she’s swirling around in a spinning chair. And this trope of a camera doing those loops is echoed throughout the film, sometimes with the camera itself or sometimes with a character who’s looping around on their own. It even points out the cyclic nature of the film itself and that opening camera shot is something we’ll come back to in the end with the ‘ritual of milk’ scene... we’ll get there. 

And this turns out ot be a movie about a severely depressed woman on the verge of losing herself to either a nervous breakdown or suicide. Indeed, Emmanuelle sometimes jump cuts in her head to a vision of herself landed on the street below, after she has thrown herself out of her flat, in little moments that crash into the visuals and collective audience consciousness in exactly the same way that a movie by Nicolas Roeg would do it. Completely disorienting the viewer as much as it does Emmanuelle and it’s just one small part of a sensual attack which builds up into a cacophony of visual and audio invasions on the audience. Again, as much as it does to the central character. So things like advertising slogans blaring in her head simultaneously pitched with newsreel atrocities from the Vietnam war and a ‘strung up like a puppet’ Action Man which she keeps seeing, manifesting itself in real life, as the sound of pigs eating matches the visuals of diners in a high class restaurant stuffing their faces and they suddenly turn into real life flesh versions of said Action Man. It’s amazing stuff.

So the story, such as it is, sounds like it could be a movie taking on the tenets of Emmanuelle Arsan... but it really isn’t. 

Emmanuelle can’t find her boyfriend, who has left his house without telling her he was going to be away. So this film follows her wandering the streets and spaces of Italy for the day, completely depressed and trying to find a man to sex her up. She goes through a number of lovers but, each time they start to sexy her up as she requests, she turns frigid at their touch and this ultimately ends up with her being both hostile and destructive to each suitor. For example, burning a writer’s new novel manuscript while he’s in the bath after failing to satisfy her... or stealing a charm given to a lover by his mother, in terms of the film’s most famous actor (besides the well loved Erika Blanc), Adolfo Celi (yup, Largo from Thunderball, reviewed here, is in this and, he keeps turning up in films I’ve been watching lately), playing against type somewhat as a pretty decent person, suckered into playing Emmanuelle’s game.

And as the film progresses through various encounters with people like this... including a self harming escort who burns himself with cigarettes... we watch Emmanuelle’s slow but constant and intense breakdown manifesting itself... with absolutely beautiful and often experimental cinematography. 

For instance, the director might start a shot with everything just a blur for five to ten seconds. And the sound design matches the chaotic nature of the movie, where he uses that tried and trusted cliché of switching from an intense build up of sound to total silence in the next shot, used as a transition. And the shot compositions! My gosh...

For instance, after five or so minutes of the film has gone by and Erika’s Emmanuelle takes to the streets, we see a street with two lamp posts on either side of it as we look down at her, cutting it into thirds and with her firmly placed in the middle third. Or, when she is talking to a woman in a restaurant and the woman has her head and shoulders to us, with her fingers and thumb rested against the side of her head, the rest of the shot is a blur except for... Emmanuelle’s right eye seen on left of screen, showing through the little ‘o’ of a gap created by the other woman’s hand against her head. It’s astonishing stuff, I tell you. 

If I were to try and give you a sense of what this film is like from referencing other works... well first I would say that it’s a film very much of its time, you just couldn’t make something like this today and get away with it... and that it reminded me of the kinds of surreal, contemporary prose that writers like J. G. Ballard and Thomas M. Disch used to submit to New Worlds science fiction magazine back in the sixties when Michael Moorcock was calling the shots. Or, in cinematic terms, it’s like watching Jack Cardiff’s Girl With A Motorcycle but cross pollinated with an unhealthy dose of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion.

So, yeah, this movie is a portrait of a woman in breakdown and she’s quite startlingly played by Erika Blanc here. Okay, so she’s a big genre star of things like Italian horror and gialli but she’s never been a favourite of mine. Here though, she looks astonishingly beautiful, even when she’s constantly suffering from stomach cramps... and, I dunno, she should have got the Italian equivalent of an Oscar for this performance. She’s absolutely stunning and it’s completely riveting. 

The last scene of the film... and this sees us deep into spoiler territory folks... sees her back on her spinning chair in her flat, a while after learning the lover who left has burned to death in a car crash earlier in the day. She nearly shoots herself but instead shoots a photo of herself and then goes through a cleansing ritual on the chair, which somehow involves her pouring milk overspilling her mouth onto her naked body (much like Salvador Dali used to say he did each morning at breakfast, after getting dressed as a kid). I didn’t really understand it, to be honest but, it looks kinda pretty and, again, like all the nude scenes in the movie (of which there are too few), it looks really great. 

And on top of that... on top of all of that... the film has an absolutely stonking score by the great Gianni Ferrio, one of my favourite Italian composers to be fair. And it’s expectedly amazing, sounding a little like the composers score for Death Walks At Midnight crashed together with his score for Death Occurred Last Night. And as the ultimate cherry on top of all of this... the vocals on the main song are sung by no less an artist as... Mina. Yup, the great Mina lends her vocalisations to this movie and it really lingers in the ear canals I can tell you that. And, thankfully, the almighty Severin Films have seen fit to include a CD of the score bundled in with this set. So, yeah, this film and its CD are well worth the price of admission alone.

And that’s me done with Io, Emmanuelle, I think. An astonishing film which lives up to that old cliché of something cinematic being an assault on the senses. I am so going to revisit this movie every few years to remind myself just why I got into watching movies in the first place. I’m sure this movie must feel like what taking a drug must feel like. Just astonishing stuff.

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection 

Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge - the novel

Arsan Around

Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
aka Further Experiences of Emmanuelle
aka Emmanuelle 2
By Emmanuelle Arsan 
Granada
ISBN 9780583125741

Trigger warning: Taboo and illegal practices discussed and sometimes condemned. 

“But the borderlines of my love aren’t identical with the frontiers of her flesh.”
Jean, Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge

Originally published in a clandestine edition in 1960, following on from the ‘official publication’ of the first novel in the series from the year before (and reviewed here), Emmanuelle L’Anti Vierge has a few different titles like Further Experiences Of Emmanuelle but, the title I have managed to get hold of is a British Granada paperback tying in with the name of the second movie, Emmanuelle 2. And, of course, the actual authorship of this volume is an enigma as to whether it was Arsan or her husband writing all these novels but, I suspect it was a collaborative arrangement. Much like the declared state of being by the main character and her husband as a combined, erotic creature and, one supposes, based on the real life experiences of the two who, as I mentioned in my review of the first tome, influenced Thai culture and brought about the swinging sex scene there. Although I now suspect something far more sinister was lurking underneath that but… yeah, not sure and, all I have to go on is the subject matter of these fictionalised exploits.

Now, I have to say that I think this sequel is infinitely better than the first novel. You may remember I talked about the ‘stops dead tonal shift’ when an excessively boring character called Mario dominates the last third of the book and pontificates about the duty and intricacies of a self sacrificing erotic pathway for humanity. Well, sad to say he’s back in this one and the first twenty pages or so are more of him and his boring philosophy. However, he happily leaves the narrative for most of the book and his further interruptions are nowhere near as tiresome and, although further elucidation and exploration of his philosophy are much invoked by various characters, it’s all mixed in with the sexual shenanigans one would expect from ‘an erotic novel’ and so the pill is significantly sweetened.

Now the ‘plot’ of the novel is very simple. Emmanuelle continues to explore different lovers of various gender (and multiples thereof) throughout the tale, as part of her ‘free marriage’ to Jean, while further exploring her path extending Mario’s original line of reasoning. So, yeah, it’s very simple, for sure, but there’s a lot of interesting and downright unusual stuff going on too.

For example, a prince gives a party where Emmanuelle is sexed up by many men (and women). Another scene at a fancy dress ball where she takes part in a happily obscene tableaux as one of many dressed as specific birds conjures up satisfyingly surreal images of something like Max Ernst’s Une Semaine De Bonté or the bird mask worn in the 1960s update of Judex. Or how about being anally taken by a buddhist monk who presents a golden dildo to her in return for services rendered by her to his religion.

Another thing which features heavily in a couple of chapters is a huge glass building with thick glass walls that don’t reveal what’s going on inside due to the sheer density of glass. It’s at a hidden location and can only be entered by driving to a secret, underground entrance and being raised into the ground floor of the building. This is basically a high class brothel with very specific rules where Emmanuelle plies her trade, once her character is taken with the idea that to be truly free, one must prostitute oneself to all and sundry. It’s here, in the only truly emotional high point of the novel, that Emmanuelle finally finds her ex lover Bee but, out of conscience, rejects her advances. It’s one of three powerful moments in the novel but the other two are decidedly strange…

And are as follows…

There’s one scene where Emmanuelle is coerced by a Dr. Marais (I couldn’t find any history on whoever his real life counterpart is) who is experimenting with a course of drugs that makes women easy to control and manipulated erotically. The book turns almost into a horror novel at this point but Emmanuelle says, after her first dosage and evening of debauchery, that she will not be back for another shot and… the book makes no mention of it in the following chapters and it’s all forgotten about, it seems. Until… until, much later in the book, a headline from a newspaper is read that Marais is wanted in connection with a police enquiry regarding a dead woman found his flat. I guess it was a lucky escape for Emmanuelle but, it makes almost a weird non-sequitur of a scene, to be honest.

But not as unusual a non-sequitur as the random scene which just appears out of the blue half way through a chapter, where two lovers, fleeing an authority and being chased by dogs, end up in their dishevelled state making love in a ditch. It seems completely divorced from the content and characters in any of the rest of the book and is a bit of a curio. I was expecting the other shoe to drop later on in the novel as it did with the murderous doctor but, no... no clue. The best way, then, to take it is that maybe it’s a metaphor for the pursuit and practice of Emmanuelle and Jean’s erotic principles but, if that is the case (and I’ve no reason to assume my best guess is right here) then maybe it would have been better relocated towards the end of the book when Jean and Emmanuelle are expounding those theories.

Now, I’d hoped the underage sex thing which permeated the sensibilities of the first novel would be happily absent from this second volume and, for the most part they are. But, when they do come they are much more blatant and I really don’t know why this vile spin is allowed to be published now, even in the wake of the court cases revolving around Lady Chatterly’s Lover, I think this kind of morally reprehensible stuff has no place in adult literature. However, Emmanuelle’s treatise at one point (though discarded by the main character soon after) includes ‘younger people‘ in it and, towards the end of the book, Emmanuelle ‘deflowers’ her best friend (before dripping sperm from her own mouth into her friend’s mouth after she is taken by three brothers on a beach). Nothing wrong in that per se but, you will probably at some point remember that her friend is only 13 years old in the previous novel and that this one is set six months later. So you can do the maths on that yourself!

However, this vile ingredient of the books aside, in general I enjoyed Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge quite a lot, with the obvious exceptions. At least now I can watch the second movie with somewhat of a critical eye to adaptation. So that’s next on my list.

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection 

Emmanuelle

Arsan About

Emmanuelle
Directed by Just Jaeckin
France 1974 
Severin Films Blu Ray

Trigger warning: Taboo and illegal practices discussed and condemned. 

The 1974 film adaptation of Emmanuelle was a big thing when it came out back in 1974, even to a young six year old like myself, who had already been working as a child model for the last five years. I remember, whenever I went down into London to do a shoot, the posters for the film were on display in places like the tube stations in London... not to mention the book being sold in ‘most reputable book shops’. The two posters I specifically remember were the very clever drawing of the snake symbolising temptation, unwrapping its coils from around an apple shape which turned out to be a lady’s derriere plus, of course, the famous Wicker Chair shot of lead actress Sylvia Kristel, which I think was also used in various newspapers and magazines like Time Out, to sell the film. 

And this is actually, kind of, a good adaptation of the book Emmanuelle (which I reviewed just here) but with scenes rearranged a little and some characters either cut out or, in one case, given a bit of a resolution. There is also a contentious addition which I’ll talk about too... which puzzles me a little, both in terms of what the heck it’s doing here and also why the lead actress was pressured into doing it.

First of all... the film is beautifully shot and edited. Sweeping views with establishing shots which sometimes have the actors walking into the back of the shot (which is a good idea and really works) and even some beautiful, pace changing, hand held camera movements in a couple of scenes which really add to the atmosphere of the story. Such as when a houseboy chases one of the maids around the grounds of Emmanuelle and Jean’s house. Incidentally, her husband Jean is played here by Daniel Sarky but, the way the character is written here is with a more emotional viewpoint... so there are times when he feels the absence of Emmanuelle when she’s off galavanting. Which, I won’t lie, detracts from the spirit of the novel a little bit.

And it’s rather well acted too, particularly by Sylvia Kristel, who gives a very naturalistic performance. It’s quite a striking turn in a way because, even from the opening scenes where she gets up and prepares her breakfast (in a not dissimilar sequence in intent to the opening of the movie version of The IPCRESS File, reviewed here, where Michael Caine goes through a similar preparatory routine), she uses her facial expressions and body language in a very considered performance but, at the same time, it’s a performance which underlines somewhat the naivete of the character... so, yeah, I can immediately see why audiences were drawn to Kristel’s rising star... not in terms of her looks (yeah, she looks fine, obviously) but more from the way her screen presence takes over.  

I’m not going to go through the whole story because it’s almost exactly the same as the book which I reviewed on the link earlier... Emmanuelle joining her husband in Thailand and having sexual encounters with various men and women... but there are differences. 

For example, her infatuation with the character of Bee is expanded and handled in a much more satisfying way... showing the love the two women share and ending with Bee’s ultimate rejection here... whereas in the novel she just kind of quickly drifted out of the narrative in a non-commital way.  And there are things like the relocation of the opening plane sex sequences from the book, replaced to a flashback sequence later in the movie (and with no children watching in this version, thank goodness).

Now then... the intensely boring scenes with Mario, played here by Alain Cuny, are downsized and made less boring by the way it’s presented in different locations in a kind of montage but... there’s a scene here where he takes Emmanuelle to be gang raped and, while the philosophy behind the character does support this kind of act in the book (and I was surprised something like this never happened in the book itself), it’s shown in a brutal way but with absolutely no consequences and change in the relationship between Emmanuelle and Mario after. And, yeah, I did think it was kind of going against the spirit of the novel here, to be sure. 

Now here’s a thing about that last point... Kristel did not want to do that scene but the director was insistent because it was in the book. Which makes me wonder if a) Kristel had actually read the book or b) if there’s a more expanded version of the book I’ve not read because, honestly, I finished the book two days before I watched the movie and I don’t remember this scene in there. 

Now then, the obvious  problem of underage sex which bizarrely permeates the book is not actually present in the film... except it is. Basically, if you know the book then you kind of know what’s going on in certain scenes and, if you’ve not read the book, no disclosures about the ages of certain characters are given. For instance, Emmanuelle’s masturbatory and dominant friend Marie-Ange was played here by Christine Boisson, who shot this film when she was just seventeen and, though she looks very young in the movie, there’s nothing given away here vocally that the character is supposed to be 13 years old. It’s all very iffy and I was torn between my love of a faithful adaptation and the fact that, nobody wants to see underage sex in anything thank you very much. So that material is not nearly as insidious in its inclusion as it was in Emmanuelle Arsan’s original book but, if you know the book then it’s kinda there if you want it. And if you want it then there’s probably something wrong with you, to be honest. 

This beautiful transfer of the film I watched is part of Severin’s wonderful Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection, which includes both the slightly shorter Director’s Cut and also the original release version, which is what I watched, that includes the small sequence the director didn’t want in of the Thai lady using her vagina to puff away on a cigarette as part of her nightclub act. And that’s me just about done with the 1974 adaptation of Emmanuelle but... I’m certainly not done with the character and her various, spelling challenged spin offs yet. See you back here tomorrow, I hope.

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection 

Emmanuelle - the novel

 

Swinging Thailand

Emmanuelle
By Emmanuelle Arsan
Translated by Lowell Bair
Harper Perrenial
ISBN 9780007300402

Trigger warning: Taboo and illegal practices discussed and suitably condemned. 

Marryat Rollett-Andruane was a Thai-French woman who, in 1956, married a French diplomat called Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane. They settled in Thailand and their hedonistic lifestyle apparently gave birth to the swinger scene in that country. She was also an actress (and allegedly director), which I’ll probably get into in a later review but, under another name, she stars with Steve McQueen in the movie The Sand Pebbles (and quite possibly had him as one of the notches on her belt.. or below it at least). In 1959 she allegedly wrote and, certainly had published (originally anonymously), a novel apparently based on her real life sexual encounters called Emmanuelle. My understanding is that the book was banned and the publisher did some jail time for it (not sure where I read that as I can’t find that info now but I’m pretty sure that’s what I read and now I’ve read the actual novel I can better understand why that might have happened… yeah, I’ll get to that later).

In the late 60s the book was unbanned and published under her pen name Emmanuelle Arsan but, it’s alleged that her husband actually wrote the book. Personally I think this might have been a collaborative work because of the way the book is paced and, there’s also some evidence recently to suggest that may be the truth of the matter… yeah, I’ll ge to that pacing issue soon enough. 

Now I wanted to read this before I embarked on Severin’s small set of the white Emmanuelle films but, I really didn’t know what I was letting myself in for here. It wasn’t the explicit erotic elements that gave me pause for thought here… I’m all for that. Nope, it was another big element of the book which seemingly permeates the majority of the attitudes of the characters which both surprised me and made me wonder why this book is a) still published and b) hailed as an erotic masterpiece. Yeah, I’ll get to that element soon because I’m torn right now about wanting to call the book out for what it also is and... the idea that doing that might in some way endanger the publication of this blog. I’ll need to word this carefully at first… I think.

Okay, so the first impression I had as I started the tale, which tells of the French diplomat’s wife going to stay with him in Thailand and embarking on a polymorphous sexual journey (ha, I’m already being diplomatic with my wording) was that it’s full of sex. More than I’d expected… at first. Including the opening sex on a plane which I believe starts off the movie version and which I know starts off the movie Black Emanuelle (with one M to evade copyright problems… reviews will eventually be coming of that strand of films, is the plan). 

Now, some reviewers have called the book badly written but I disagree. I think it’s very well written and has a nice, almost poetic turn of phrase about it. For instance, rather than say such and such character laughed at her question, the book phrases it thusly… “This question let her discover Bee’s laugh!” And things like a woman’s sexual regions might be referred to as, say, her Astrakhan triangle. And the quality of the written sex is also pretty well done for erotica. I recently read a much lauded piece of erotic source for another review coming soon at some point here and the text was absolutely terribly written (cough… Behind The Green Door… cough) and this book is like Dickens compared to that stuff. A blow job, as given in the first half of the book, is rendered beautifully with words, for example. So I was actually fairly impressed by the writing. Although, since it’s translated from the French, one has to wonder if the skill of the writing lies in the original written word or the translator… something I’m sure I’ll never know.

Okay… then the book takes a turn for the worse. The sex disappears and a character called Mario enters the story. And then we get maybe 60 or more pages of unbelievably boring and terrible philosophy on the nature of eroticism. To say it’s dull would be an understatement. It’s stops the book stone cold and leaves it to die. It’s why I believe that maybe it was a husband and wife collaboration… with one writing the first half and one writing the other half.  It’s also at this point that you kind of realise how easily malleable and changeable the lead character’s mental outlook is. She seems somewhat fickle to the point of instability as each new sexual encounter… most of them open ended and not resolved in this particular text... takes place.

Now then, I’m calling this book out now because… well... I was surprised that a lot of the sexual encounters and discussions in the book take place within the company of minors. Underage sex is happening here and, though the victims of this are not portrayed as such, usually dominating and instigating some of the sexual content, it’s quite unsettling and makes me question the legality of the book (and makes me wonder just how far the film must deviate from the source to be allowed a cinema release… I guess I’ll find out soon). But, yeah, while it’s not all the book it certainly is an underlying part of the tale and it does not shy away from scenes of sexuality involving, well, youngsters. I’m astonished this book has been hailed as a classic and I’m just not sure what’s going on here… nor why the majority of the short snippet reviews on Amazon I quickly scanned to see if other people were calling it out, rarely mention this insidious aspect of the book, if at all. 

And that’s me done with the first Emmanuelle book, I think. While the book is quite engaging for the most part and offers surrealistic imagery such as an orchard of wooden penises hanging from the trees… the other stuff I mentioned in the last paragraph is a real deal breaker and I’d find it hard to recommend this thing to anybody. Now I have to see what’s happening in the movie version, I guess. I’m sure that element must have been stripped out of the tale, such as it is (more a series of episodic encounters than a tale, truth be told). 

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection 

New Year's Day 2026

 

Happy New Year 2026

Well, it’s been a terrible year for me. 

Started okayish and I had a good couple of weeks off from work in August but, yeah, everything this year was overshadowed by the passing of my father at the end of October. Still picking up all the pieces for that one and probably for a long time to come.

Half the stuff I wanted to get up on the blog last year happened and, some of it didn’t. So, as per usual, this is a very rough guide to what you might expect to see reviewed on the blog this year...

So the Dirty Harry films for sure, the Bruce Lee movies and more secret agent titles. I’m hoping to finish off Severin’s magnificent All The Haunts Be Ours box so I can start putting those up too. Plus the remainder of the Jesse Stone TV movies. I’m also hoping to finally get around to watching and reviewing the first few Emmanuelle (with a double M) films, along with a whole raft of Black Emanuelle (with a single M) films, plus a few other sexy titles (... “there’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door”, is all I’m saying... along with a ‘Thanks very much Melusine label’!).

Oh... and thanks to the likes of Vinegar Syndrome and Severin, I should be revisiting some unreviewed Dario Argento titles in new transfers too. 

So, a little to look forward to there at least, I would say.

Anyway, have a Happy New Year and, like always, normal review service returns tomorrow.