In the time I've had a Netflix account, I've had a varying degree of emotions towards the movies I've chosen. I'm very happy I chose to see The Godfather. I was pleasantly surprised by Collateral. I was disappointed by Silence of the Lambs. I was mildly embarrassed for renting Havoc. I was bored to tears by Half Nelson (which I sent back half-watched. I didn't even bother to rewind).
There have also been plenty of WTF moments, where I wonder why the hell I rented this movie, and why am I insisting on finishing it? Such was the case with my recent viewing of Sweet Movie, which you've already read about (unless you haven't). But for the first time, I actually feel ashamed with my choice of Netflix flick. I really wish I could have recognized at the beginning of this film that the feeling I was having was not just plain bewilderment... it was my brain warning me not to continue.
The movie in question is Emmanuelle. It is a French movie from 1974, which is why you've never heard of it. Unless you have, it is slightly infamous. I have two key rules about watching films. First is I don't only watch movies I think I'll like. That's part of the reason a 30-year old French movie is in my Netflix queue. The second rule is before watching a film it is best to know as little as possible about it. That way, I have no expectations, and any disappointment I feel is the film genuinely sucking.
In this case, I wish I had broken my own rule. I would have discovered something that probably would have saved 90 minutes of my life and a small piece of my pride. At first, I thought that maybe Emmanuelle was just over-sexualized, kinda like The Secret Life of the American Teen but with some actual eroticism and simulated sex. Maybe the director was hoping for some of the shock and awe strategy of an art film and just really failing. Or perhaps being a French movie something about the point trying to be made with the explicit (faked) sex and clunky dialogue was lost in translation. Or maybe all French films were just like this one, kinda like how all Japanese films feature giant robots.
Then after the film was over, I did what I normally do and went to Wikipedia to learn a little something extra. That's when I read this:
"Emmanuelle is a 1974 French softcore erotic film..."Um... oops.
I never thought I would descend to the point where I'd be renting softcore porn from Netflix in search of something that might challenge my worldview. The fact that I did it by accident is only a small reprieve.
I really don't understand the point of softcore, which essentially consists of mostly naked people dry-humping. If you were looking for some kind of eroticism, is there really any advantage to actors simulating sex over actors actually having sex? As my favorite movie reviewer once opined, is there really an entire cadre of people who are big fans of mild titulation?
The only high point of this movie is the actresses are all pretty attractive and naked. Other than that, there is no real story to get into and no action to speak of. Any interactions or locations are merely setups for fake sex scenes.
The movie opens on our leading lady preparing to travel to Bangkok to meet up with her husband. The theme music playing over this scene is a bright, cheery acoustic guitar piece, and would lead one to believe this is an earnest independent French film and not pornography. Those sneaky bastards. They got me with their high production values.
Next we meet her husband, played by that creepy dude from Music To Massage Your Mate By. In real porn, it doesn't matter if the guy is ugly, because that's not the most important aspect of his character, if you catch my drift. However, this is softcore, so that aspect will never come into play. Meaning the most care should have been made in this case to cast someone who can appear erotic despite being fully clothed. So they cast this guy.
We cut to Emmanuelle and hubby driving around in a goofy car on the streets of... Bangkok? Is that really Bangkok? At the very least, it's an impressive setpiece made to look like a typical busy generic Asian-country street. I should give them credit for at least doing that. We're talking about an industry that would usually shove a desk and a potted plant into a corner in some guy's living room and calling it an office, or a classroom, or a construction site.
Hubby spends the entire car ride asking Emmanuelle about the affairs she had in Paris while he was away. He's not jealous about any of this, and practically brags to her about all the women he's slept with. She responds by holding his arm and resting her head on his shoulder. What's the French word for Amore?
They arrive at a lovely house, staffed with attractive servants. They go to the master bedroom and proceed to have sex in what proves to be the only really erotic scene in the movie. So of course, I forgot to screencap it.
Dammit!
Two of the servants, a guy and a girl, watch them humping through an open window. This gets the guy servant all hot and bothered, and he starts trying to get down with the girl servant. She tries to run away and he starts chasing her around the house. They seem to be laughing and having fun, until he actually catches her and appears to rape her. But that might just have been the weird intense music that was playing making me think that. On second thought, it might have been her screaming as if she were being raped. Is this supposed to be titilating? If so, who is this movie's target demographic?
He's going to molest me! teehee!!!
Then Emmanuelle goes to a pool to meet the other rich women in town. Apparently the only things to do in Bangkok are sit around and talk about sex, have sex with multiple partners, and play squash. The girls inquire about Emmanuelle's affairs in Paris, but she says she had none, even though her husband seems to encourage her sexual freedom.
Ah... now I'm starting to get this movie.
Also at this gathering, Emmanuelle (let's just call her Em going forward) meets someone I assumed was there with her parents, because she looks to be about 12 years old. She of course starts prancing around completely naked, and I proceed to get very uncomfortable.
What's the French word for Lolita?
Her name is Mary-Ange, and she and Em strike up a friendship. Back at Em's place, Mary-Ange borrows a magazine and proceeds to pleasure herself right in from of Em to a very grateful picture of Paul Newman. I hope Paul got paid for his heavy contribution to the movie's plot.
And of course, 100% of his proceeds went to charity.
That awkward moment past, Mary-Ange then asks Em why she doesn't have affairs in spite of her husband's insistance that she does. Em admits she has had affairs, and as Em starts to pleasure herself, we fade to her flight from Paris to Bangkok. It's nighttime on the plane and most people are asleep, except for this guy...
Em subtley presents to her potential mate by... you might have guessed... pleasuring herself, which is starting to feel ridiculous since I've typed it so many times. After a few moments, he joins her in some very public sex. In fact, some other dude in the back of plane watches them the whole time, and when they're done, he takes Em away to the bathroom. They enjoy some more descreet action.
Talk about the ultimate fantasy... that airplane bathroom is huge!
Back to the present. At a squash match with one of the ladies from the pool, Em almost has her first sexual encounter with a woman. I say almost only because they don't get totally naked, but the chick does feel her up pretty good. I would count that as a sexual experience, but the movie doesn't. Not that there's a scoreboard or anything, but it comes up as a "plotpoint" later on.
I've definitely seen worse movies.
Some time later at a party, Mary-Ange tries to introduce Em to Mario, seen here striking out:
How low have you sunk if a woman is insulting herself just to get away from you? Anyway, Mario propositions Em that he can help her ascend to some new level of eroticism, but Em thinks he's a creepy old man and rejects him.
She then sees another woman that she finds interesting for no reason, and asks two of her friends to be introduced. They both refuse, apparently because this particular woman is more interested in doing things other than sitting around and having sex all day. Her name is Bee, she is an archaeologist, and Em decides to follow her around for a day. Although I picked a lousy screenshot to illustrate that.
Bee is at first uninterested in Em, intimating that Em is beautiful but too immature for her tastes. Em tries to show her independence from her husband by inviting herself to follow Bee on a trip to somewhere on horse back. A few horseback riding scenes later, they swim naked together under a waterfall. Sure didn't take long for Bee to warm up, did it?
Two naked chicks under a blanket. Still not the greatest movie ever. Somehow.
The next segment is a little confusing. I think Bee dresses Em up as a boy so she can sneak her onto the archeological dig site or something. That's what I conclude from making her wear an oversized jumpsuit and baseball cap, but it's never explained what is going on here.
Meanwhile, Em's hubby is showing signs of discomfort with her having run away, despite his previous professions of allowing her freedom. To cheer himself up, he goes to a local brothel where he (and the viewer, in this case me) watches a few chicks grind on one another, and some other chick (I should probably cut this part out) smokes a cigarette with her lady parts. Least titilating scene ever. Apparently hubby didn't like it too much either, because he winds up fighting with some random dude and getting his ass handed to him.
I should'a stayed home with my copy of Beach Babes.
Back with Em and Bee, we finally get a scene of total (softcore) lesbian action. It is odd that Em, even though this is her "first" experience, is so good at pleasuring another woman. Em proceeds to profess her love to Bee, but Bee rejects her as being too immature. Em is sad.
Back in hubby land, the dude is furious and goes to Em's squash partner's house (should'a written her name down). He's looking for Em and knows she's with Bee somehow, and expects the squash partner to know where to look. The woman excoriates him for going back on his whole Em being free thing, and taunts him to have his way with her. He calls her a whore, and they wind up simulating rough sex on a coffee table. But he was so jazzed up about sticking it to her that he forgot to take his pants off.
He goes home to find Em naked in a corner and crying. He promises to help her do something which I forgot to write down what it was. Safe to say it was about sex.
Hubby sets her up on a date with Mario for some reason, I guess because Mario is like some kind of erotic sensei. Over dinner, Mario tries to convince her that eroticism is more important than love or something, and that she should not give herself to only one person. Not that she had that "problem" in the first place. Mario's whole philosophy is that monogamous marriage is about to die, and a third person should be introduced to a marriage by force.
The philosophy has many levels
Mario takes her on a carriage ride, where he has some stranger feel up her legs. He then takes her to a hooka bar where he proceeds to get so high he lets a couple strange dudes take her out back and rape her. Damn this guy is smooth.
They then go to some shanty somewhere, where he has two guys duke it out for the right to take her. They call it "Thai Boxing", but when the match starts, the first thing the guy tries to do is kick the other guy in the head. I always thought boxing was like soccer, except you can only use your hands.
So the winner has sex on the floor with Em, and afterwards Mario carries her to his pad. He sets her down on a bed in a room, and she begs him to make love to her. He says he's waiting for "the other Emmanuelle" that I guess he expects to emerge now that she's had so much simulated sex. He leaves the room.
She goes over to a mirror and starts prettying herself up before the film freeze frames on her and the theme song kicks in. I guess this is meant to be the transformation that so many characters have been hoping for her to have over the course of the movie to a more mature kind of tramp. Whatever... ends.
So why have I bothered to review this movie in such detail, even going to the trouble of including screencaps which forced me to watch it twice? Sort of like how I felt after viewing Sweet Movie, I do feel like I need to make amends. Mostly to myself.
The problem is, getting so deep into a movie I dislike, I hope to bring something more out of the experience. With Sweet Movie, I don't really understand what the movie is, but at least I feel like the filmmakers were trying to say something. Plus I really wanted to warn potential viewers of what they would be getting into should anyone ever recommend it to them. Which could happen, because there is a small cult of Sweet Movie aficionados out there.
I doubt the same could be said of Emmanuelle, since really it's just a dumb soft-core porno movie. I can't really say you should stay away, because there's nothing really offensive here. In fact, there's almost nothing beyond the unoccasional visage of some very beautiful women. But you don't have to sit through a 90 minute movie in order to see that.
So watch it if you want to. I'm just saying you really shouldn't want to.
-review submitted by Dave
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