Opening this year’s San Sebastian International Film Festival, Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle” marks an unexpected sequel to her Golden Lion winner “Occurring” — on paper, anyway.
If anything, the filmmaker took an identical tack, using a literary adaptation to emphasize sensory experience, in this case the elusive quest for bodily pleasure. “The enterprise was a complete renewal,” says Diwan Selection. “Reliving sensations and then sharing them with viewers.”
Updating Emmanuelle Arsan’s 1967 novel, the latest model imagines a thirtysomething Emmanuelle (Noemie Merlant) as a sort of leisure quality management inspector, sent to check out a luxury Hong Kong hotel run by Naomi Watts and haunted by a mysterious visitor played by Will Sharpe.
And while the film focuses on pleasure, it typically sees these desires unfulfilled, focusing on both frustration and euphoria. “Pleasure, and the pursuit of it, should remain a suspense,” says Diwan. “So I intended to explore the topic from my perspective without giving any standard answers. As every woman knows, pleasure comes with a very personal definition.”
How did you decide to continue “Occurring?”
In a truly private stage, I am wary of consolation. My artistic impulse is driven by ardor and concern—the issues that drive me to commit three years to an enterprise. So I wasn’t immediately pleased when my producers proposed “Emmanuelle.” I hadn’t seen the original film—at least not in its entirety—but I found the source novel fascinating. Two-thirds of the way through, the narrative stops to give way to a nearly 100-page dialogue on the nature of desire. It got me thinking: I wondered whether eroticism could still be a relatable narrative device, and I wondered how these themes from 1967 might still resonate. Can these questions be translated into modern cinematic language?
Like this?
Eroticism is basically about the body—about the pressure between what you see and what you don’t see. Again in the 70s, the urge was to show more, which is what made mainstream film so profitable. Plus, I felt that what was hidden was more eye-catching—I believed in pushing that pressure by asking the viewer to actively interact with the film and collaborate in the story. But even that wasn’t enough to justify the commitment, not until I considered this concept of a woman who now can’t experience pleasure going on a journey to reclaim it. (And after “The Happening,”) I said to myself, if I can describe pain, maybe I can do the same for pleasure.
How did you make this world yours?
The film is more about a relationship with the world than just a relationship with the physical. By taking “Emmanuelle” and using it as a vessel — leaving aside previous portrayals — my goal was to present a fresh take, focusing not on a naïve young woman but on a 35-year-old professional woman and building from there. This type of woman faces a completely different set of expectations, a societal stress to become her “best self” by making the most of everything, seeking new insights or experiences that ultimately inform the same story. You he must take pleasure in yourself and you need to get it – and to be successful you need to realize that pleasure. This gets pretty exhausting, so[co-author Rebecca Zlotowski and I]came up with a course of letting go, opening a window, taking a deep breath and letting go of those dictates.
Why set the film inside a luxurious lodge?
A luxury lodge is a dizzying place, as we discovered during filming. The smell, the music, everything is eternal and unchanging. If something happens, it returns to its authentic place the next day. There is a kind of vertigo in this eternal flow—a seductive but sterile environment. Chaos is uncommon, and even when it does happen, it is quickly smoothed over. Emmanuelle herself becomes an instrument of this world. She works in high-quality management, ensuring that her friends’ experiences are as pleasurable as possible. Yet she knows that these experiences are synthetic, part of a set design.
Both the setting and Will Sharpe’s presence bring to mind “The White Lotus.”
Of course, it’s funny how many films and exhibitions have picked up on this theme. I can’t speak for others, but “The White Lotus” definitely plays with the same concept of appearances and individuality, exploring what’s below ground. The atmosphere of the lodge creates social distance, and everyone wears a kind of armor. There’s a distinction between the public self and what goes on behind closed doors, while the place tells a narrative of recent loneliness. We meet people, but we don’t really know them. The lodge grants us something unique, but in a way that doesn’t really involve interacting with the world.
Many intimate scenes in the film find Emmanuelle alone. Why deal with a kind of extra-onanistic expression?
This is also a reflection of this empty relationship with the world. People are eager to rebuild connections because to find real pleasure you first have to get out of your solitary bubble and have a real interest in others. Ultimately, I wanted the film to uncover how suffocating synthetic pleasure can actually feel. Sooner or later, you want to step away from the decor, out of the barracks where every interaction is coded and prematurely scripted, a place with so little creativity that there is no room for fantasy. That’s the moment I wanted to focus on—the desire to escape and breathe after feeling confined.
The film is not just a straightforward feminist review — as the French press has strangely implied — nor is it overtly carnal.
French journalists often describe any questioning female pleasure as a feminist. In fact, the 1970s “Emmanuelle” was described as feminist for precisely the same purpose! Clearly, the title “Emmanuelle” has strong connotations, and those who already know my work come with certain expectations, but I didn’t want to make a film that simply overturned previous codes. That seemed a bit simplistic and would have been a very limiting experience.
I also didn’t want to restrict the eroticism of the film to a few sex scenes. Then it would really feel like I was making a nasty sports movie, you know? Eroticism, to me, is about environment. It’s about filling the body with shock and desire. I rewatched Jean Eustache’s “The Mom and the Whore” when I was writing it and realized how erotic dialogue can be. Even something as simple as a thunderstorm, when it’s sensual and insinuated into a place that claims to be great, can provoke those feelings.
Given the setting and narrative of a prolonged flirtation, a certain comparability between Wong Kar-wai comes to mind.
That’s right. Whenever we ask people to name an erotic film, “Within the Temper for Love” comes up a lot, as it’s about people bumping into each other and rubbing up against each other in the hallways. And I really like that definition of eroticism! Plus, when you’re in Hong Kong, you just can’t fight that reference.
In fact, for a long time, I couldn’t go to Hong Kong because of the Covid restrictions. So I looked up a lodge online and determined that was exactly where I wanted to film. After that, once I was finally able to do some solo scouting, I looked at 40 extra locations, but I stuck with one that I found online. And at some point, I met the lodge’s decorator, and he told me that he had decorated the lodge with “In the Temper for Love” in mind. Somehow, the effect was inevitable, and we didn’t try to avoid it.
How did you plan the more intimate moments of the film?
We are involved in something that cannot be seen. Probably the most honest, uncontrollable, and difficult-to-show body tic is orgasm. And yet, this female orgasm can be very typically represented—and Noémie and I talk about this a lot—in ways that would not emerge from a woman who has actually experienced a real second of pleasure. Having to characterize this second can be very difficult, especially because, as an actress, Noémie may be simulating something that could not possibly resemble a fake orgasm.
We sought to escape previous representations while making something that was false seem true, and the method was exhausting. We shot take after take all night long, never feeling like we had gotten to the right place. After that, with exhaustion came inspiration. Noémie saw her body going slack, and she used it. With fatigue, at some unspecified point in the future, something happens that cannot be measured or prepared for—a sigh and a smile.
How did you and Merlant interact on the subject?
We mentioned the tradition of the female physique in photographs, because women are sometimes taught to present themselves for the gaze. In a way, this involves making a spectacle of the physique, and we tried to work against this concept. Noémie seeks to discover the inner sensations, feelings and experiences of the character rather than displaying her own. With Laurent Tanguy, the director of photography, we sought to capture the image without the camera becoming intrusive. The goal was to reverse the standard dynamic between camera and actress, allowing the actress to discover and analyze her physique while the camera questions and interacts with her.
Does working with an actor who also directs affect your relationship on set?
Of course, yes. In fact, Noémie and Could both have directing experience, so we all had a really interesting collaboration, with a lot of conversations about framing. They both intuitively understood each side of the camera, and they shared their eye with mine. It was an interesting training.
Noémie started her career as a model, so she really understands the body and its physique within it, and is deeply involved in the subject, as reflected in her personal film, “The Balconettes”. Specializing in these issues has liberated her; she is very free because she knows exactly how she wants to paint the body.
Will is English-Japanese and wanted to work on his Japanese roots here. He is so thoughtful about illustration. My casting director hinted that we might get along, but didn’t say anything more. So when I finally met him, he was so excited to share that he found himself at home with these kids on New Year’s Eve and decided to watch “Occurring” as soon as the clock struck midnight. He said it was a sign that he started the year fascinated by these issues!