Emmanuelle (2024)
エマニュエル（2024）
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
The 1974 softcore icon remade by a woman as a search for a lost orgasm in a Hong Kong hotel.
On a flight to Hong Kong, Emmanuelle has sex with a stranger in the plane's toilet and feels nothing. Another passenger, Kei, sees them go. She is a quality inspector for a group of luxury hotels, sent to the Rosefield Palace, which Margot manages. The service and the rooms are close to faultless, and her first report says so, but the owners, unhappy that the hotel has slipped in the rankings, want grounds to dismiss Margot, and Emmanuelle is told to find them.
She tastes the dishes, times the drinks by the pool, meets the man who watches over the staff, and looks for pleasure without finding it: a threesome with a young couple leaves her blank. Two guests draw her in. Zelda, a young escort who works the pool, knows that Emmanuelle is watching her with a client, and later the two women touch themselves while watching each other; the only luxury open to everyone, Zelda says, is pleasure when she wants it. When Margot sends Zelda away, Emmanuelle is angry. Kei, an engineer, is the hotel's enigma, a top-tier guest who never sleeps in his room and disappears into the city at night. He tells her he has run out of desire. He builds dams, he says, knowing the ocean will have the last word. She slips into his room and bathes in his tub. A typhoon blacks out the hotel, and Emmanuelle and Margot work side by side to make the night something magical for the guests.
At last she leaves the hotel and follows Kei into the back streets, food stalls and mahjong parlours of Kowloon, hunting for a legendary club called Fenwick. It turns out to be a gambling den, and Kei is there for work. In the back room of a club, with Kei translating, Emmanuelle faces a local man and says aloud, for the first time, exactly what she wants, and she climaxes.
Starring
Noémie Merlantas Emmanuelle
A quality inspector for a luxury hotel group, sent to Hong Kong to find fault with a manager, who no longer feels pleasure.
Emmanuelle’s story
On the flight to Hong Kong, Emmanuelle has sex with a stranger and feels nothing. At the Rosefield Palace she tastes, times and inspects, watches the guests on the security cameras, and looks for pleasure without finding it; a threesome with a young couple leaves her blank. Zelda, the escort who lets her watch, is the first to stir her, and the two women touch themselves while watching each other. When Margot sends Zelda away, Emmanuelle is angry. Kei, who says he has run out of desire, draws her further: she slips into his empty room and bathes in his tub. At last she follows him into Kowloon, and in the back room of a club, with Kei translating, tells a stranger exactly what she wants, and climaxes.
Will Sharpeas Kei
An engineer who builds dams, a guest who never sleeps in his room and says he has run out of desire.
Kei’s story
Kei sees Emmanuelle leave her seat with a stranger on the flight to Hong Kong. At the Rosefield he is a top-tier guest whom even the staff cannot explain: he smokes where he should not, never sleeps in his room and vanishes into the city at night. He turns down her invitation to have sex in a hotel bathroom and tells her he has run out of desire; he builds dams, he says, knowing the ocean will have the last word. He tells her to get out of the hotel. When she follows him into Kowloon, the fabled club turns out to be a gambling den where he is simply working. In the back room of a club he stands apart, putting her words into Cantonese for a stranger, and is there when she climaxes.
Naomi Wattsas Margot
The manager of the Rosefield Palace, whom the hotel's owners want an excuse to dismiss.
Chacha Huangas Zelda
A young escort who works the hotel pool and shows Emmanuelle the pleasure of being watched.
Why it matters
Emmanuelle takes the name most associated with softcore cinema, from the 1974 film that turned Emmanuelle Arsan's novel into an international phenomenon, and gives it to a woman who cannot feel pleasure. Audrey Diwan, whose previous film, Happening, followed a student trying to end a pregnancy in 1960s France, wrote it with Rebecca Zlotowski, and they set aside the novel's young wife in Bangkok for a professional whose job is to judge other people's comfort and who has lost her own. The issues are real ones: sex performed without pleasure, a luxury world in which every desire is serviced and watched, and the idea that a woman's pleasure may begin when she says aloud what she wants. It was received coldly at its San Sebastián premiere, and many critics found it clinical. What it leaves open is whether pleasure can be found by searching for it, or only by letting go.