“Women have the right to have sex and receive pleasure without love”

Audrey Diwan won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2021 for her adaptation of the novel by Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux The eventFrom the harshness of the abortion in that film that caused a lump in the throat, he now moves on to explore female pleasure with a 21st century re-enactment of the erotic film. Emmanuellestarring Silvia Kristel half a century ago and which gave rise to a good number of forgettable sequels.

With this new Emmanuelle which opened the 72nd edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival today, the French director has left aside Emmanuelle Arsan’s original novel to focus more on the main character and her body, seeking the complicity and imagination of the viewer so that they “use their personal experiences and feelings, based on what I show in the film.”

“I didn’t want to adapt the 1974 film because I’ve only seen 20 minutes of footage and I wasn’t the target audience,” she continued. “What I did do was read the book and with this film I wanted to establish a debate about the language of eroticism, which is what you show and hide at the same time. If people want to see sex scenes, they already have the Internet,” the director told the press, who wanted to focus with this story on “telling how we deal with pleasure in our society, not just sexual pleasure.”

In fact, the film has few sexual scenes but a lot of erotic content, with the game of glances and masturbation coming into play. There is, at the beginning, a sex sequence in an airplane lavatory and a constant search for a lost desire, but the story that Diwan tells, set in a Hong Kong hotel, is very different from that Bangkok where Kristel, as the young wife of a French diplomat, had different sexual encounters. “For me, it was important not to imagine eroticism with sexual sequences but by creating a propitious atmosphere. Words, even a storm, can be very erotic. I wanted to give the audience space to interpret for themselves what they are seeing,” says Diwan.

For me it was important not to imagine eroticism with sexual sequences but by creating a favorable environment. Words, even a storm, can be very erotic.

Audrey DiwanDirector

“It’s not just a film for women. Everyone can be in this woman’s body. I’m optimistic because in The Event, men told me they felt pain, so if we can share the pain, we can also share the pleasure,” argues the filmmaker, who stressed that “I thought it would be interesting to talk about Emmanuelle and loneliness. Because I remember that in my youth I felt alone when everyone told me that I had to be successful. And we also have the right to seek true relationships, sincere and intimate things. To be able to share feelings of loneliness and connect with each other, as happens to Emmanuelle when she arrives in Hong Kong in the film.”

In the film, Noémi Merlant plays a very sensual woman who travels to Hong Kong to evaluate the quality of a luxury hotel run by a manager Naomi Watts who has dropped in the ranking. She has to observe every detail, the behaviour of the clients and the service staff. She leads a life of luxury and a familiar voice on the other end of the phone reminds her to enjoy her job. But she is sad and embarks on relationships with some clients, becomes intimate with an escort who frequents the hotel and feels strongly attracted to an Asian client who never sleeps in the establishment and has not had sex for years.

Merlant, who wore her long blonde hair at the press conference, in contrast to the dark, medium-length locks of her Emmanuelle, said that she had not heard of either the book or the film before accepting the proposal. “Many acquaintances warned me not to do it because of what happened to Silvia Kristel, but if people are so afraid it is because there is something to tell. I was very curious.” According to the actress, “Emmanuelle does not belong to her body, she responds to the dictates of society and she makes people satisfied. She is like a kind of robot. But she wants to have a connection with herself and have her own pleasure.”

In her opinion, it is “very interesting that today there are women who feel pleasure, who seek sexual stories without having to be in love.” “We have the right to have sex and receive pleasure without love and that is part of the freedom of the character,” she concluded bluntly.