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Stars: Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang, Anthony Wong, Harrison Arevalo | Written by Emmanuelle Arsan, Audrey Diwan, Rebecca Zlotowski | Directed by Audrey Diwan

Back in 1974, the original Emmanuelle was something of a cause celebre, a French soft-core erotic drama that became a huge crossover hit, inspiring multiple sequels and bestowing instant fame on its eponymous star, Sylvia Kristel. Now it’s been remade, with French star Noemie Merlant in the lead, and given a 21st century spin by director Audrey Diwan, the acclaimed director of 2021’s Golden Lion-winning abortion drama Happening. However, whatever Diwan and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski were intending with this supposedly erotic dalliance, it does not appear to have penetrated, so to speak.

Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) plays Emmanuelle, a high-flying quality controller for a chain of luxury hotels. She’s first introduced having a spot of mile-high fun with...

Noémie Merlant, Naomi Watts and Will Sharpe languish in a luxurious hotel in Audrey Diwan’s self-conscious remake of the classic French softcore drama

If anyone could have rebooted and revitalised the much-mocked 70s softcore-sexy franchise Emmanuelle, you would think it would be that formidably smart film-maker Audrey Diwan, winner of the Venice Golden Lion for her drama Happening. In the porn-chic era of 1974, Emmanuelle was an odyssey of saucy self-awakening which featured Sylvia Kristel seated on the iconic rattan chair, and was directed by Just Jaeckin, the man with the most outrageous name in adult entertainment. In theory, this meisterwerk is ripe for reinvention as a spectacle of unapologetic sensuality in our new world of the sex-positive and kitsch-positive.

But even with Noémie Merlant as her lead and no less a film-maker than Rebecca Zlotowski working with Diwan on the screenplay, this Emmanuelle 2.0 comes across as inert and self-conscious,...

French actress Christine Boisson, who got her big-screen break as a 17-year-old in Emmanuelle, has died at the age of 68 in Paris.

Boisson had just left school and was still a minor when Just Jaeckin cast her in his 1974 erotic classic as the sexually adventurous teenager Marie-Ange, who introduces Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel) to the shady libertine figure of Mario.

After being cast in a handful of smaller roles purely on the basis of her physique, Boisson decided to go back to school and studied acting at France’s prestigious Conservatoire.

On completing the three-year course, she refused to take on roles where the principal consideration for the casting was her physique.

Deadline Related Video:

Over the course of her 40-year career, Boisson ratcheted up more than 50 film credits including Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman (1984), Daniel Schmid’s Jenatsch (1987), Jacques Bral’s Exterior, Night, Yves Boisset’s Radio Rave...

The 1974 romantic drama Emmanuelle caused quite a stir upon its release. Based on an erotic novel, the film featured explicit love scenes that were virtually unprecedented for mainstream cinema at the time. Starring a young Sylvia Kristel, Emmanuelle told the sexually liberated story of a woman discovering intimacy in Thailand alongside her husband. It proved a massive box office hit and cultural talking point, ostensibly helping to normalize depiction of female sexuality on screen.

Fast forward several decades, and French filmmaker Audrey Diwan took on reviving the property. Fresh off her acclaimed drama Happening about the 1960s abortion battle, Diwan set out to bring Emmanuelle into the modern era. This new version casts Noémie Merlant as the title character, now recast as a quality inspector for luxury hotels. Her latest assignment brings her to Hong Kong, where she finds herself drawn to both women and men.

With its stylish visuals...

A snigger-trigger from the moment its first trailer dropped, erotic drama Emmanuelle is more or less the embarrassing exercise in pointless revisionist filmmaking most were expecting it to be. It’s a work that’s all too easy to write off as another example of that very 21st century phenomenon, the relaunch of a campy mid-20th century brand but with more pretension, moodier lighting and an entirely fatal absence of humor.

In this case, the original property was a book turned softcore porn film (the tome by Emmanuelle Arsan, the picture directed by Just Jaeckin and starring Sylvia Kristel), which became a massive crossover hit in 1974, racked up mountains of receipts at mainstream theaters, contributed for good or ill to the discourse around the so-called “sexual revolution” of the time and taught millions how to convert regular jeans into cutoff shorts.

Director Audrey Diwan’s follow-up to her rightly acclaimed,...

It’s a surprise to find out that director Audrey Diwan had never seen the original Emmanuelle — a gauzy soft-porn feature that got la toute France hot and bothered when it was allowed to be shown in normal cinemas in 1974 — before she was approached to do this remake, which opens the San Sebastian Film Festival in Competition. In its day, Emmanuelle spawned a string of sequels, each reputedly worse than its predecessors, while star Sylvia Kristel became so immediately famous for taking off her clothes that the expectation blighted her entire career. It also made a huge amount of money.

But what’s most surprising about the fact that Diwan — who made The Happening, which won the Golden Lion in Venice three years ago — had not seen Just Jaeckin’s then-so-scandalous film is that this one seems to be constructed as an answer to it. Both are based on Emmanuelle Arsan’s pseudonymous 1967 novel,...

French director Audrey Diwan is opening the San Sebastian Film Festival this evening with third feature Emmanuelle, in the company of its star Noémie Merlant and supporting cast members Will Sharpe, Chacha Huang and Jamie Campbell Bower.

Diwan, who won Venice’s Golden Lion for abortion drama Happening in 2021, has taken inspiration for her first English-language picture from Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel, originally published clandestinely in France in 1959 and then officially in 1967.

The work sparked a franchise of erotic, soft porn films, kicking off with Just Jaeckin’s 1974 cult movie, starring Sylvia Kristel as a woman who joins her diplomat husband in Bangkok where she embarks on a series of sexual adventures.

In Diwan’s contemporary adaptation, Merlant plays hotel quality control agent Emmanuelle, who is sent to audit a luxury hotel in Hong Kong, where she comes up against a steely hotel manager, played by Naomi Watts.

Bored...

Audrey Diwan’s erotic quest movie “Emmanuelle” has dropped a first trailer and poster ahead of its world premiere screening in September at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Shot in Hong Kong, the film is freely adapted from Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel of the same name. It casts a female gaze on the intimate quest of the woman whose name still evokes one cinema’s most provocative characters.

With “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” star Noémie Merlant in the title role, Emmanuelle goes in search of a lost pleasure. She flies alone to Hong Kong on a business trip. In this sensual global city, she initiates numerous encounters and meets Kei (Will Sharpe), a man who constantly eludes her.

Alongside Merlant, the film also stars Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong.

Diwan, a Venice Golden Lion winner for her 2021 film “Happening,” co-wrote “Emmanuelle” with fellow filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski,...

Audrey Diwan’s Emmanuelle has been announced as the opening film of the 72nd San Sebastian Festival, in competition.

The feature film will world premiere on September 20 in a gala screening attended by the director and the cast, led by French actress Noémie Merlant in the titular role.

Further cast members include Naomi Watts, Will Sharpe (The White Lotus), Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong.

Diwan, who won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion with Happening in 2021, co-wrote the screenplay with filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski.

The English-language feature is inspired by the character and world created by writer Emmanuelle Arsan, whose 1967 erotic novel was adapted into the cult 1970s movie starring Sylvia Kristel.

Plot details have been largely under wraps, but the festival revealed on Tuesday that the film “follows the steps of...

Good afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here leading you into the Christmas break with your final dash of news and analysis of the year. It’s been a blast. Thank you to regular readers for taking time out your busy schedules to give this a good ol’ glance every week. As our counterparts across the pond like to say, we appreciate you. We’ll be back in 2024 with plenty more.

‘Warnamount’ Shocker

Bob Meets Dave: Save a bit of your Christmas sympathy for media reporters around the world this year, who let out a collective anguished cry amidst the Xmas wind-down period when news broke Thursday of a bombshell meeting between Warner Bros. Discovery (Wbd)’s David Zaslav and Paramount Global’s Bob Bakish. This of course only means one thing. The ink is barely dry on the WB-D merger and yet the defining story of 2024 could now be the next stage,...

Two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts has joined the cast of “Emmanuelle,” Audrey Diwan’s highly anticipated erotic drama, Variety has confirmed.

Diwan’s follow-up to the Venice-prizewinning “Happening,” the film is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel and is based on a script co-developed by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski (“Other People’s Children”). The book centers on a woman and the series of erotic fantasies that she entertains. It was previously made into a 1974 film of the same name, directed by Just Jaeckin and starring Sylvia Kristel, which became a cult hit.

Watts revealed the news when she posted a now-deleted Instagram Story with “Emmanuelle” co-star Noemie Merlant, a critically acclaimed French actor who broke through in Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and made her English-speaking debut in Todd Field’s Oscar-nominated film “Tar.” Merlant plays the titular role in “Emmanuelle.” The rest of the cast comprises...

Exclusive: The success of Audrey Diwan’s sophomore feature Happening made her next gig as a filmmaker an intriguing one. Her choice of project, created even more intrigue.

As we first revealed last year, that project is English-language debut Emmanuelle, inspired by the character and world created by writer Emmanuelle Arsan, whose 1967 novel of the same name was adapted into the lucrative and cult 1970s soft-core movie starring Sylvia Kristel.

Diwan’s adaptation deviates from that earlier movie and from the source material. We confirmed casting and production details about the movie this morning here, including a first-look image of star Noémie Merlant.

Plot details have been kept under wraps, though Diwan told us last year that the contemporary movie will take place in a luxury hotel where Emmanuelle (Merlant) works and that it will “explore her quest for pleasure”. Unlike the original movie, this film will see its protagonist...

Exclusive: Production has wrapped in Paris on Audrey Diwan’s (Happening) anticipated erotic drama Emmanuelle, which stars Noémie Merlant (Portrait Of A Lady On Fire) in the title role.

We can reveal an exclusive first look at the English-language movie, which will also star two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive) opposite Merlant, Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) as the male lead, Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), Chacha Huang (Money Heist) and Anthony Wong (Infernal Affairs).

Inspired by the character and world created by writer Emmanuelle Arsan, the film shot in Hong Kong and Paris from a script co-written with Rebecca Zlotowski (Other People’s Children).

Plot details are being kept under wraps but Diwan’s film will deviate from the lucrative and cult 1977 movie adaptation of Arsan’s novel, which starred Sylvia Kristel as the wife of a French diplomat in Bangkok who embarks on a voyage of sexual discovery.

Neon is circling U.S. rights to Audrey Diwan’s English-language debut, “Emmanuelle,” an erotic drama that started filming in September in Paris with Noemie Merlant starring in the titular role.

The film is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel and is based on a script co-developed by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski (“Other People’s Children”). The book centers on a woman and the series of erotic fantasies that she entertains. It was previously made into a 1974 film of the same name, directed by Just Jaeckin, and starring Sylvia Kristel. That film developed as a cult hit.

Diwan is best known for her sophomore outing, “Happening,” which received critical raves and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. “Happening” tells the story of a woman obtaining an illegal abortion in the 1960s. After its Venice premiere, the film went on to win the César Award for best female newcomer...

The last film of Ko Nakahira is one that definitely stands out in both Atg and his own filmography, since it was shot in France and includes intense elements of European (French) cinema in the way it unfolds, although it also includes some elements that make it distinctly Japanese.

Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below

Kyoko and Juzo used to be a couple but have not seen each other for over a decade, with her actually getting married with a rich, middle-aged man in the meantime. The two meet again in Paris in 1972, and decide to take a trip together, where they mostly talk about politics and revolution in particular, their relationship in the past, and have sex. The sudden meeting with Kenzo, a man Kyoko met from her current husband, and his European partner leads them to reevaluate sex and their relationship, while a bit later,...

The Black Emanuelle films aren’t really a series in the proper sense of the word. True, they all star Indonesian-Dutch actress Laura Gemser, and she usually plays a globetrotting photojournalist called Emanuelle. (The single “m” in her name was used to avoid infringing on the copyright of Just Jaeckin’s 1974 softcore sensation Emmanuelle starring Sylvia Kristel.) But there’s no notion of continuity between installments (often the product of different teams of writers and directors), and, even though a core group of actors does turn up time and again, they always play different, unrelated characters. What unites these films, apart from Gemser’s presence, is their dedication to exploring sexuality in a frank and uninhibited manner.

Severin’s new box set, The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, brings together all 21 of the Laura Gemser films, most of them newly restored from 2K scans of the original materials, as well...

Duo previously collaborated on ’Bullhead’ and ’Racer And The Jailbird’.

Belgian filmmaker Michaël R. Roskam is reuniting with the team behind Bullhead and Racer And The Jailbird for wartime feature Le Faux Soir, set to star regular collaborator Matthias Schoenaerts.

Set in 1943, it tells the story of when the Belgian resistance secretly produced a spoof version of the country’s leading newspaper, Le Soir, which had become a propaganda tool of the occupying Nazi forces.

Schoenaerts, who starred in Roskam’s Oscar-nominated Bullhead and was more recently seen in David O Russell’s Amsterdam, is set to play the Belgian resistance hero.

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, alongside his 1999 short film Judgement, as well as Bi Gan’s new short A Shory Story and his second feature Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Peter Strickland’s new short.

Additional highlights include new episodes of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom Exodus, Denis Côté’s That Kind of Summer (which we caught at Berlinale earlier this year), Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy ahead of his imminent new project, and an Abel Ferrara double bill to close out 2022.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

December 1 – That Kind of Summer, directed by Denis Côté | Luminaries

December 2 – The Cat’s Meow, directed by Peter Bogdanovich

December 3 – La chinoise, directed by Jean-Luc Godard | For Ever Godard

December 4 – The Kingdom Exodus: The Congress Dances, directed by Lars von Trier | The Kingdom Exodus

December 5 – Judgement,...

(L-r:) Jack O’Connell and Emma Corrin in Lady Chatterley’s Lover Image: Parisa Taghizadeh/Netflix If you are of a certain age, there’s a possibility you have a special connection to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. No, not the book that was written by D.H. Lawrence in the late 1920s, but...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Sylvia Kristel in Emmanuelle (1974). Audrey Diwan, whose film Happening won last year's Golden Lion at Venice, will be directing an English-language adaptation of the erotic novel Emmanuelle. The film will star Léa Seydoux in the titular role, which was first played by the great Sylvia Kristel. Ahead of this new iteration of Emmanuelle, we also recommend reading Abbey Bender's reappraisal of the subversive softcore series.Lynne Ramsay has announced her next feature: an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's short story Stone Mattress, starring Julianne Moore and Sandra Oh. The story takes place on a cruise into the Arctic Passage, where protagonist Verna (to be played by Moore) encounters a man from her past.Recommended VIEWINGThe trailer for Three Thousand Years of Longing, George Miller's first film since 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road.

Léa Seydoux, who is in two films at this year's Cannes is to reprise the role first played by Sylvia Kristel, right Photo: UniFrance One of the cult erotic film hits of the Seventies Emmanuelle is to be remade by Happening director Audrey Diwan - who received the Golden Lion in Venice last year -with Léa Seydoux in the title role originally taken by Sylvia Kristel.

The new adaptation from the 1959 novel by Emmanuelle Arsan has just been announced at the Cannes Film Festival. It will be made in English with a script developed by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski, who directed 2013 film Grand Central, which played at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. She is currently preparing her third feature, co-authored with Robin Campillo, while continuing to co-write with other directors.

Léa Seydoux will be the new Emmanuelle, pictured here in last year’s Cannes hit Deception by Arnaud Desplechin Photo:...

Léa Seydoux and Audrey Diwan are teaming up for “Emmanuelle.” The film will mark the English-language directorial debut of Diwan, who has received critical raves and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for “Happening,” the story of a woman obtaining an illegal abortion in the 1960s. Seydoux will play the title role in the film.

“Emmanuelle” was inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel and is based on a script co-developed by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski (“An Easy Girl”). The book centers on a woman and the series of erotic fantasies that she entertains. It was previously made into a 1974 film of the same name, directed by Just Jaeckin, and starring Sylvia Kristel. Adaptation rights for Arsan’s book were acquired by Chantelouve (Marion Delord and Reginald de Guillebon), producers on the film.

The project was announced at the Cannes Film Festival, where Seydoux is premiering two films,...

Playing with Fire (1975)After becoming an international sensation in 1974 with her for-the-ages erotic turn as the titular Emmanuelle, Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel had the European art world at her feet. Sylvia grew up in Utrecht, the daughter of hoteliers, before shipping off to Catholic boarding school, attending dance school, and finally making her way to Paris. There, she found small parts in movies, eventually winning Miss TV Europe, a title that would land her an audition for Emmanuelle. The film changed Kristel’s life overnight, bringing her both opportunities to bolster her sex-symbol image and break away from it. A new home video collection from Cult Epics—which includes Julia, Playing with Fire, Pastorale 1943, and Mysteries—highlights the delicate balance Kristel found between her sexy persona and art-house aspirations.Julia is the closest Kristel would stay to her Emmanuelle role outside of that franchise, and would itself become a video-store...

Holland Film Meeting is the industry strand of the Netherlands Film Festival.

Paula van der Oest’s €9m English-language drama Mata Hari is among the films being presented during the Holland Film Meeting’s projects programme, the industry side of this year’s Netherlands Film Festival, which begins today (September 24) in Utrecht. It will run until October 2.

Van der Oest, promised a ”feminist approach” to the subject matter. “Most of the existing Mata Hari films are told from a male perspec­tive,” she told Screen. “They focus on Mata Hari being a glam­orous and exotic spy. A dangerous temptress,...

Eli Roth, who is known to have a passion for Italian B-movies, is at the Venice Film Festival to help promote biographical doc “Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess,” directed by Manlio Gomarasca and Massimiliano Zanin, in which Roth features as a talking head.

The doc, which premiered on the Lido as a special screening, sheds light on Aristide Massaccesi, known as Joe D’Amato, the under-the-radar producer, director and cinematographer who between the 1970s and the late 1990s spawned some 200 films in a wide range of genres spanning from spaghetti westerns to horror to erotic/exotic to porn. Roth spoke to Variety about what makes D’Amato stand out, including the fact that Indonesian-Dutch actress Laura Gemser starred in his “Emanuelle” franchise, not to be confused with the French “Emmanuelle” pics. Edited excerpts.

How did you discover Joe D’Amato and his films?

I first experienced...

Exclusive: UTA has signed internationally acclaimed actress Sylvia Hoeks in all areas. She most recently starred in the World War II drama Plan A opposite August Diehl. Up next, Hoeks will star as the title role in an untitled biopic about the life of actress Sylvia Kristel.

Currently, Hoeks stars in Apple TV+’s original sci-fi series See opposite Jason Momoa and Alfe Woodard, which was recently renewed for a third season.

Hoeks’ other credits include Blade Runner 2049, opposite Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford; The Girl in the Spider’s Web, opposite Claire Foy; and The Best Offer, opposite Geoffrey Rush and Jim Sturgess. She also appeared in several Dutch television series and films including Duska, which earned her the Dutch equivalent of an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Her other recognitions including the Berlin Film Festival’s Shooting Star award.

She will continue to be represented by Willemijn Tuip...

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Cult Epics Indiegogo Campaign For “Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol Written by Jeremy Richey Hardcover Book” + Sylvia Kristel 1970s Collection 4x Blu-ray set.

Los Angeles, CA (April 2021)

For Immediate Press release.

Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol

A trailblazing figure in film and popular culture, Netherlands native Sylvia Kristel became one of the biggest stars in the world as Emmanuelle in 1974. Alongside her most famous role, directed by Just Jaeckin, a little-known fact is that Sylvia Kristel also appeared in over 20 films between 1973 and 1981 featuring exceptional work with some of the greatest directors in film history including Walerian Borowczyk, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Roger Vadim and Claude Chabrol. Now the story of Sylvia’s astonishing career in the '70s is told in Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol, written by Jeremy Richey. Featured are new interviews with Just Jaeckin,...

Re>Connext is the annual film and TV showcase run by Flanders Image.

The first footage from Netflix drama Soil, directed by Bad Boys For Life duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, is to be presented at Re>Connext, the annual film and TV showcase run by Flanders Image.

It is one of 26 upcoming television projects selected for the event, which serves as an export platform for film and TV drama made in Flanders and will run online from October 5-31. The physical showcase has been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scroll down for full list of projects

Soil,...

Paris-based Lincoln TV is set to reunite with the creative team behind “Mirage” on a period series about the turbulent life of Sylvia Kristel, the 1970’s sex symbol and star of the erotic film trilogy “Emmanuelle.”

Titled “Sylvia,” the six-part series will be based on Kristel’s 2006 autobiography “Nue” (“Naked”), in which the late actress chronicles her rise and tragic downfall.

Currently at the script stage, the series is being created and penned by Bénédicte Charles and Olivier Pouponneau, who previously wrote “Mirage” with Franck Philippon. Lincoln TV, the well-established banner founded by veteran producers Christine de Bourbon-Busset and Marc Missonnier, has acquired the audiovisual rights to Kristel’s autobiography from the publishing house Cherche-Midi.

The project is currently being shopped to key French channels and Lincoln TV is aiming to partner up with a Flemish co-producer.

“We think the story of Sylvia will strike a chord in the post-MeToo era.

Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre is in active negotiations to direct “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” for 3000 Pictures, led by Elizabeth Gabler.

“Life of Pi” scribe David Magee wrote the script.

Oscar nominee Laurence Mark and Pete Czernin and Graham Broadbent of Blueprint Pictures are producing.

Based on the classic D.H. Lawrence novel, the story revolves around the life of Lady Chatterley, a woman born to a life of wealth and privilege, who soon finds herself married to a man that she eventually falls out of love with. She engages in a torrid affair with a gamekeeper on their English estate, discovering more desire and intimacy than she thought possible.

Lawrence’s risque novel has been adapted several times, including a 1981 version with “Emmanuelle” star Sylvia Kristel and a less-explicit 2015 TV version with Richard Madden.

Marisa Paiva and Nikki Cooper are the executives overseeing the project for 3000 Pictures.

De Clermont-Tonnerre’s drama...

The Ace Series Special is running Nov 4-9 in Brussels.

European producers organisation Ace Producers has unveiled the selection of sixteen producers who will participate in its inaugural TV drama-focused initiative, the Ace Series Special, running Nov 4-9 in Brussels.

The programme is aimed at experienced producers who want to create a series division within their film companies and, or deepen their knowledge of developing and producing TV drama series for an international audience. Each participant will attend with a series project in the early stages of development

They include Belgium’s Bart Van Langendonck at Savage Film, who will...

Who is Emmanuelle? In the 1970s, the name was synonymous with sophisticated sensuality. French director Just Jaeckin’s 1974 film, based on a 1959 erotic novel and starring Sylvia Kristel as the sexually adventurous title character, launched a soft focus empire leading to two more canonical installments, the fabulously titled Emmanuelle II: The Joys of a Woman and Goodbye Emmanuelle. Emmanuelle is playing in a sparkling new restoration at New York's Quad Cinema, alongside the other films in the trilogy and a handful of the more dubious spinoffs. The Quad is also showing six other films by Jaeckin, among them his similarly porno-chic The Story of O (1975) and the wild Indiana Jones rip-off-meets-S&M-cartoon The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak (1984), starring none other than video vixen Tawny Kitaen. Emmanuelle was Jaeckin’s first film and remains his best known—and while it may not be great cinema,...

Living abroad as a youth certainly had its advantages; the Odeon theatre in Mandeville, Jamaica showed everything from Hollywood blockbusters to Shaw Brothers’ Kung Fu epics to Italian exploitation and horror. Of course I took in as much as my ten year old mind could possibly take; I’m sure a film like Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) played there, but alas, I missed it. Thanks to Severin Films, this Joe D’Amato sleaz-o-rama is finally available for my (still) ten year old sensibilities to behold.

And while my inner adolescent should be jumping up and down at what is accomplished here - it is essentially soft core adventuregrue porn – the sum does not quite equal the parts for my grumpy grown up persona. The sex and the slaughter don’t sit particularly well together, and I sure could have used a lot more of the latter. But what’s it all about,...

Author: Zehra Phelan

Blade Runner 2049 actress Sylvia Hoeks has signed up to play Emmanuelle star Sylvia Kristel in an upcoming biopic from Michael R. Roskam.

The project is said to be inspired by Kristel’s life after she relocated to L.A. and her life spiralled out of control with a number of relationships and developing a cocaine addiction. The centres on Kristel’s iconic career in the ’70s and ’80s when the huge success of the “Emmanuelle” films stood in stark contrast to her troubled personal life, a press statement said:

“Sylvia Kristel was one of the women that opened up a sexual way of looking at sex for women,” said Hoeks. But she added: “She was also “very free-spirited, maybe even too early in that regard for her generation.”

Hoek’s stated on the troubled actress “her intelligence and creativity as an artist made her difficult to grasp.

Director and documentarian Mark Hartley scores both a film history and comedy success with this ‘wild, untold’ account of the 1980s film studio that was both revered and despised by everyone who had contact with it. The ‘cast list’ of interviewees is encyclopedic, everybody has a strong opinion, and some of them don’t need four-letter words to describe their experience!

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

On a double bill with

Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Blu-ray

Umbrella Entertainment (Au, all-region

2014 / Color / 1:77 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date April 4, 2017 / Available from Umbrella Entertainment / 34.99

Starring: Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus, Al Ruban, Alain Jakubowicz, Albert Pyun, Alex Winter, Allen DeBevoise, Avi Lerner, Barbet Schroeder, Bo Derek, Boaz Davidson, Cassandra Peterson, Catherine Mary Stewart, Charles Matthau, Christopher C. Dewey, Christopher Pearce, Cynthia Hargrave, Dan Wolman, Daniel Loewenthal, David Del Valle, David Paulsen, David Sheehan, David Womark, Diane Franklin, Dolph Lundgren, Edward R. Pressman,...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

Daniel Bird: “What is your opinion of Walerian Borowczyk’s work?”Andrzej Żuławski: “Borowczyk? Oh, he lost himself, I think, it’s a pity because he was quite a talent.” One radical filmmaker laments another radical. With one sentence, Żuławski encapsulates the conventional arc of Borowczyk, or as he calls himself in Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre (1967), Boro’s career. He was a great animator working with Jan Lenica in Poland and, when moving to France, Chris Marker[1]. His shorts influenced Jan Švankmajer, Terry Gilliam, and the Quay Brothers, and were praised by critics like Amos Vogel and Raymond Durgnat. With his first two live-action feature-films, Goto, Island of Love (1968) and Blanche (1971), critics hailed Boro as part of the major league—an auteur. He’s the next Bresson! He’s the next Buñuel! Then he made Immoral Tales (1974), a blemish in his body of work at this point in his career.

Mark Hartley’s latest schlock-doc charts the rise and fall of 1980s B-movies studio Cannon films, but finds little of substance behind the stories

Mark Hartley’s Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story Of Cannon Films is the Australian director’s third shlock-doc in a row, coming as it does after Not Quite Hollywood, his superb history of Ozploitation cinema, and Machete Maidens Unleashed!, his toothsome survey of trash-heavy 1970s B-movies shot in the Philippines. It examines the career of Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, two Israeli cousins who, having given birth to the domestic Israeli movie industry (with a nostalgia-heavy sex comedy named Lemon Popsicle), landed in Hollywood in the late 70s and built an empire making terrible, ultra-cheapo B-movies boasting boobs by the boatload, bloodshed by the tankerful, and special effects that were anything but special.

Their bargain-basement galaxy of stars included Charles Bronson, after nobody in Hollywood...

'Emmanuelle' movies producer Alain Siritzky dead at 72 (photo: Sylvia Kristel in 'Emmanuelle' 1974) Emmanuelle franchise producer Alain Siritzky died after what has been described as "a short illness" on Saturday, October 11, 2014, at a Paris hospital. Siritzky, whose credits include dozens of Emmanuelle movies and direct-to-video efforts, several of which starring Sylvia Kristel in the title role, was 72. Ironically, Alain Siritzky didn't produce the original, epoch-making 1974 Emmanuelle. He became involved in that Yves Rousset-Rouard production via his Parafrance Films, which distributed Emmanuelle in France. 'Emmanuelle': 1974 movie sensation A couple of years after the release of Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones (not to mention Boys in the Sand and Eyes of a Stranger), and the year after Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider sparked a furor by having simulated sex in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, the 1974 French release Emmanuelle still managed to become a worldwide cause célèbre.

Alain Siritzky, best known for producing the Emmanuelle series of erotic films, died Saturday in a Paris hospital after a short illness, his family told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 72. In the early 1970s, Siritzky acquired the audiovisual rights to the popular 1959 novel Emmanuelle by Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Arsan. He then distributed Emmanuelle (1974), which starred Dutch actress and model Sylvia Kristel as the promiscuous wife of a French diplomat. See more Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2014 The “soft-core” movie, filmed in Bangkok, was an immediate sensation in France and would play on the Champs Elysees for 13

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The rise and fall of Cannon Films is told in Mark Hartley's wildly entertaining documentary, Electric Boogaloo. Here's Ryan's review...

Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were famous (or infamous) for many things, but a stringent approach to quality filmmaking was hardly one of them. At the height of their success in the 1980s, the Israeli cousins, and their company Cannon Films, were synonymous with cheap B-movies of just about every kind: Chuck Norris action flicks, sex comedies, ninja martial arts epics, dance movies and tawdry slasher horrors.

Their films frequently horrified critics, but became a staple of video rental stores: with Cannon Films cranking out as many as 50 or so pictures a year at its peak, the company's distinctive logo and self-explanatory film titles (New Year's Evil, Avenging Force, Enter The Ninja) were ubiquitous throughout the 80s and early 90s. The company was eventually brought down by its fast-and-loose approach to film production,...

Netherlands Production Platform hands out awards during Holland Film Meeting.

Midway through the 33rd Netherlands Film Festival (25th Sept to 4th October) in Utrecht, Festival Director Willemien van Aalst has made an impassioned call for the film sector to fight back against the ongoing funding cuts.

The theme of the festival is “Naked.” This is partially a tongue in cheek tribute to one of Utrecht’s most famous film figures, Sylvia Kristel, who died last year and who is buried in the town. (Kristel’s most famous film Emmanuelle screened over the weekend.) However, van Aalst pointed out, “as a film community in the Netherlands at the moment, we are getting naked because of all the cuts.”

The Festival is running on a budget of €3.2 million, down from €3.6 million in 2012.

There have been job losses in the Festival organisation, which is now more streamlined and more dependent on freelancers and volunteers.

“This has been...

From Lovejoy to Deadwood, Ian McShane has made a career out of playing rogues. He tells us about his drink- and drug-fuelled past, and how he's given it all up to make blockbusters for his grandchildren

On a breezy spring afternoon in Santa Monica, Ian McShane and I are hauling furniture around a hotel room. The suite has been used recently for a photo shoot, and McShane has decided he wants everything back the way it was. I pull one of the sofas towards the fireplace, dragging the rug with it. He manoeuvres the other with surprising ease: he's a small but compact man, around 5ft 7in, sinewy, with a light mahogany tan; and although there is some grey amid the glossy black curls, it's very easy to forget that he is 70. "Seventy years old!" he rages in his distinctive Lancastrian burr, like syrup on sandpaper. "How did that happen?...

The family of "Selena" star Lupe Ontiveros is incredibly upset she was left out of last night's "In Memoriam" presentation at the Oscars ... despite appearing in dozens of major films over the past 30 years. Ontiveros -- who passed away in July 2012 --  had roles in "Real Women Have Curves", "As Good as it Gets", and "The Goonies" ... but is best known for her role as Yolanda Saldivar, the woman who murdered Selena. Ontiveros' son Elias...

Sylvia Kristel has become the subject of a biopic from PVPictures and Dutch Features.

The late Emmanuelle star's son Arthur Kristel will serve as a creative consultant on the project, according to Screen Daily.

Kristel died at the age of 60 last October following a lengthy battle with cancer.

She began her career as a model in the 1970s before being handed her big break as an actress in Emmanuelle, an erotic film about the exploits of a man and his beautiful young wife in Thailand.

The Dutch actress went on to appear in several Emmanuelle sequels as well as Hollywood films such as Red Heat with Linda Blair.

Later in her career, Kristel dabbled in directing and won a 'Special Jury Prize' at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival for a short animated film she helmed called Topor et Moi.

Sylvia Kristel: Object of Desire is scheduled for release in 2015.

Watch...

Not pornography but a certain type of R-Rated film that one may have enjoyed at the Drive-ins in the 1970′s is the focus of Super-8 Sex Movie Madness November 6th at The Way Out Club. In this edition of our monthly film festival (now in its fourth year!) where we show edited version of movies (average length: 15 minutes) on old-school Super-8 Sound film, we’ll celebrate the days when men were hairy and women were natural (and hairy). We’re showcasing Sylvester Stallone in an 18-minute condensed version of The Italian Stallion, a 1970 soft-core sex film (originally titled Party At Kitty And Studs) he starred in six years before Rocky that was re-titled to cash in on his Oscar-winning success. It has to be seen to be believed! The other films we’ll be showing to fit this month’s theme are the Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood’s 1957 cross-dressing classic Glen Or Glenda,...

In 1970, six years before he ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to Bill Conti.s anthem in Rocky, Sylvester Stallone claims he was living in a bus shelter and needed money. So like many hungry actors he agreed to star and appear nude in a sex film and was paid $200 for two days work. The resulting film was a 60-minute drama with a $5000 budget titled Party At Kitty And Stud.S.

So what does the audience get for Stallone.s $200 gig? Basically, it is a standard-issue early 70s skin flick but it.s the type of arty skin flick popular at the time, two years before hardcore features like Deep Throat broke through to the masses. A .sex. film at that time meant lots of nudity and simulated intercourse. Hard-core penetration footage could be found in shorts and .loops. but features at this time usually just...

Sad news: earlier this week, the Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel died of cancer at the early age of sixty. While she has been a supporting actress in many mainstream films of the seventies and eighties, by far her most famous role was as the title character in Just Jaeckin's 1974 French softcore classic, Emmanuelle. It's hard to overestimate the popularity of that film when it was released. These days the name Emmanuelle (or sometimes Emanuelle for copyright reasons) has been used in association with so many sequels and cheap knock-offs that it has become synonymous with cheap exploitative nudity. But the original was something else: until the eighties arrived it was still in the top ten highest grossing films of all time, the first French...

London, Oct 19: Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, who starred in the 1974 erotic French film Emmanuelle, died on Wednesday in her sleep. She was 60.

The actress, who had cancer, was admitted to hospital in July after suffering a stroke.

"She died during the night during her sleep," the BBC quoted her agent, Marieke Verharen as saying.

'Emmanuelle,' which told the story of a sexually promiscuous housewife, spawned numerous sequels and played in a cinema on the Champs-Elysees for 11 years.

Released in 1974, the.

Star of 1974 film about bored housewife who embarks on voyage of sexual discovery dies after cancer battle and stroke

Sylvia Kristel, the Dutch-born actor who brought sex to the multiplex, has died at the age of 60. She had been battling cancer and suffered a debilitating stroke in June of this year. "She died during the night during her sleep," her agent, Marieke Verharen, told the Afp news agency.

Having initially worked as a model, Kristel rose to stardom in Emmanuelle, the 1974 tale of a bored, beautiful housewife who embarks on a journey of sexual discovery. Directed by Just Jaeckin, the softcore drama sent Kristel's character through an endless whirl of skinny dipping, masturbation and the leg-over antics of the Mile High Club. But Emmanuelle's hedonistic worldview struck a chord with mainstream 70s audiences. It went on to become one of the most successful French productions ever, earning upwards of...