Released half a century ago in Paris, the film “Emmanuelle” was an immediate phenomenon with an impact: millions of spectators at the time and a run for a decade, without pauses, in the theaters of the Le Triomphe cinema, on Champs Elyséess avenue.
Of course, highly sexually charged films had been filmed long before, even the scandal over Bertolucci's “Last Tango in Paris” was fresh.
But Just Jaeckin's film, with Sylvia Kristel as the protagonist, referred to another level of intensity: from end to end.
It was in our country and in many others (here, some got private screenings or crossed to the cinemas in Uruguay, just as the Spaniards still did in Franco's time to Paris).
But in France, where the conservative Valery Giscard d'Estaign had won the elections against the socialist Francois Mitterand,
censorship was swept away
.
Some studies even place “Emmanuelle” within the
shock wave that the French May '68 produced
in all areas, something that seems exaggerated.
For example, the filmmaker Clélia Cohen was one of those who referred to her subject in her documentary “Emmanuelle, the longest caress in French cinema.”
Emmanuelle.
Sylvia Kristel
The images spread in Emmanuelle are a
touch of naivety next to the
explicit sex that would later explode on digital platforms.
The cinematographic value is also questionable, although relatively passable without comparing it with the saga that followed to imitate it (about 40 films with her stamp, one more deplorable than the other in technique and content).
“Nine and a Half Weeks”, in the following decade, was the other cinematic tank of the same line.
Kim Basinger, her protagonist, was luckier than Kristel: she was able to build a career in film – Oscar included – while the Dutch woman was always marked by her role in Emmanuelle.
The producers gave the direction to Just Jaeckin, a fashion photographer, whom they valued for his refined aesthetic.
Jaeckin found his protagonist by chance; no French actress had accepted the role.
Sylvia Kristel was a 21-year-old young woman, recently consecrated in a beauty pageant – Miss Europe TV – who appeared at the casting of another film.
Jaeckin, who died two years ago, recalled the moment like this: “I saw a young woman with short blonde hair passing by.
And I instantly fell cinematically in love with her.
I said to myself: 'This is Emmanuelle!'
It was a stroke of luck".
Another image that lasted was that of the diffusion poster.
Emanuelle sits, with her pearl necklace and her intense erotic charge, on a wicker chair.
It was a combination of sensuality, provocation and oriental exoticism.
But it is an image that does not appear at any point in the movie.
Emmanuelle, the book
“Emmanuelle” was the title of the book published in 1959 in France, signed by Emmanuelle Arsan and which
did not provoke at the time, even remotely, the impact and scandal of the film
.
Under the pseudonym Arsan was, in reality, Marayat Bibidh, a woman from Thailand's high society, the daughter of diplomats and, at the same time, married to a French diplomat, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andrianne, who at that time was an official. of the UN in Bangkok.
Arsan had a certain, less well-known, career in literature and cinema; she died in 2005.
Some sources cite that the book was actually written by her husband.
And others, like the Danish writer Suzanne Brogger, a friend of the couple, affirm that it was the work of both of them.
“Emmanuelle”, the book, was part of the collection of literature/erotism that Clarín published a few years ago and in whose presentation text Juan José Becerra summarized: “Erotic literature is a planet created by the forces of enlightenment and secularism.” .
The god of this libertine religion is undoubtedly the Marquis de Sade, because he gave a minor genre his artistic prose, the transcendence of mysticism, the danger of death and a dramatic and scenographic, that is, cultural, organization to the impulses of the body. ”.
The genre is too broad in time and too broad in quality, since it ranges from literary classics to inferior texts, even when an attempt is made to give them a “cultural” dimension.
Emmanuelle would never enter the big leagues of literature.
His presentation of Arsan's work indicated this: “Make love at all hours, day or night, in any circumstance, with whoever, whether he or she, or them, with anyone who asks and That she likes it, this is the law that Emmanuelle obeys when, at the age of twenty, she arrives in Bangkok to join her engineer husband.
Thus, in the exotic framework of a neocolonial, European, restricted and refined society, the young woman discovers the profound rules of love, the glory of sexual pleasure thanks to her own body, and she goes to meet a "natural" and optimistic philosophy. .
Emmanuelle, the protagonist
Emmanuelle, a film that was registered in soft-porn, describes the adventures of a French woman who arrives in Thailand to reunite with her husband, and from there they move into scenes of free love.
Sylvia Kristel, born on September 28, 1952 in Utrecht, was the protagonist
without any acting background
.
She also participated in the first films of the saga (Emmanuelle 2, Goodbye Emannuelle) until she faced a film career.
But, as Marcelo Stiletano described in
La Nación,
“the character created by Emmanuelle Arsan was for Kristel
the eternal guest of a golden cage
.”
He was a sex symbol that spread around the world at breakneck speed thanks to cinema.
A myth fueled by censorship that prevented in many countries (including Argentina) the possibility of fully discovering a new erotic approach that Emmanuelle brought to cinema in times of breaking down inhibitions and prejudices.”
Sylvia Kristel
He got to act for Chabrol ("Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore") but the films he filmed within the category --- did not have much success.
Her erotic vein was maintained for other calls such as “Lady Chatterley's Lover” (1981 adaptation of the book by DH Lawrence, which these days has a new version on the platforms) or her role as Mata Hari.
In her autobiography, Kristel commented:
“I was dressed, but people preferred me naked
.
I spoke, but they preferred me silent or dubbed.
I realized that the public had been deeply affected by Emmanuelle and they wanted to prolong the fantasy of her, to keep me inside her, symbolic and naked, idealized and necessary.
When she came to the cinema she was married to a well-known Belgian writer, Hugo Claus, who was twice her age and was the father of her only son, Arthur.
She then had five other marriages, one of which left her in ruins.
In that autobiography she also described her moments of alcoholism and drugs.
Her final recovery – she dedicated herself to painting and exhibited in Amsterdam – was brief, she died in 2012, a victim of cancer.
“Sylvia was a wonderful woman, very pure, very naive.
Like me, she was overcome by the shock that Emmanuelle caused, it was very hard for her,” Jaeckin dismissed her.