Goodbye Emmanuelle (1977)

Goodbye Emmanuelle (later retitled Emmanuelle 3) was the third of the official Emmanuelle movies. It was also intended by Sylvia Kristel to be her last appearance in the role (although that proved to be not quite the case).

Goodbye Emmanuelle came out in 1977, two years after Emmanuelle 2, and it marks a significant departure for the series. The first thing that is noticeable is that the simulated sex scenes are much briefer, and much tamer, than those in the previous two films. They’re very tame indeed compared to those in the very steamy Emmanuelle 2.

Even more startling is a dramatic change in tone. Goodbye Emmanuelle tries to be a serious look at the actual consequences of the sexual revolution that the first two movies celebrated with such enthusiasm. Whether it succeeds or not is a matter of opinion but director François Leterrier certainly seemed to have his own ideas on the direction in which the series should go.

Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel) and her architect husband Jean (Umberto Orsini) are now living in the Seychelles. There’s not much to do there other than have sex but luckily that’s all that Emmanuelle and Jean are interested in doing.

They still have their open marriage and of course they’re blissfully happy because how could you not be happy if you’ve overcome all those silly antiquated notions like jealousy and possessiveness? Emmanuelle and Jean are a liberated couple and being liberated is the key to happiness. And yet there are signs that perhaps Emmanuelle is not quite as happy as she should be. She is starting to suspect that men treat her like she’s a whore. She’s even starting to suspect that they may have some justification for doing so. She’s finding that maybe jealousy isn’t so easy to leave behind. And she’s starting to wonder if a husband who enjoys watching his wife have sex with other men (and women) might not be much of a husband. He might not even be much of a man. Could it be that she has discovered that sexual freedom comes at a price? And that maybe the price is too high?

Some of Emmanuelle’s friends are also discovering that sexual freedom has its downside. One even suggests to our heroine that the problem with sexual liberation is that one day you get old.

This all comes to a head when she meets handsome sensitive film-maker Grégory (Jean-Pierre Bouvier). She’s attracted to him so naturally the first thing she does when they meet is to perform oral sex on him. Curiously enough this doesn’t seem to make him like her, or respect her. Emmanuelle is very confused by this.

In fact everything about Grégory confuses and disturbs Emmanuelle. He has quaint old-fashioned ideas about love and sex. He even believes it’s only possible to love one person at a time! He thinks jealousy is normal and natural. He thinks there is more to love than just having sex. He doesn’t believe in orgies or threesomes. This guy is seriously weird. The worst thing is, she can’t stop thinking about him. She wants him desperately. She doesn’t just want to have sex with him, she wants to be with him. You know, walking hand-in-hand along the beach and all that outdated romance stuff.

Emmanuelle is, for the first time in her life, falling in love. She’s also learning that other people actually have feelings (something of which she was entirely unaware).

Of course this means that Sylvia Kristel has to do a bit more serious acting than in the previous Emmanuelle films, and she does give a more complex performance that suggests that Emmanuelle might have some actual depth to her character.

The fact that this movie has some serious ambitions isn’t the problem. There’s no reason why you can’t make a serious movie about sex. The problem is that for the story to work, really work effectively, there needs to be a much more intense erotic charge in the developing relationship between Emmanuelle and Grégory. We need to be convinced that for Emmanuelle sex with someone she cares about really is a whole lot better than the empty meaningless sex she’s had before. The sex with Grégory needs to mean something, but that erotic charge just isn’t there and the emotional intensity isn’t really there either. It’s not that the sex scenes need to be more explicit - they just need to be more intense and more passionate.

As director François Leterrier knows how to use the exotic location and how to give the movie the lush look that was the Emmanuelle trademark. Unfortunately he shows no flair for the erotic, which is a bit of a problem when you’re making an erotic movie. He deserves credit for trying to explore the emotional ramifications of Emmanuelle’s lifestyle but overall the movie is just a bit on the dull side. When you have Sylvia Kristel as your star and she spends a good deal of her screen time naked and your movie is still dull you’ve definitely done something wrong.

The Region 4 DVD offers a pretty good transfer, with negligible extras.

Goodbye Emmanuelle is an interesting experiment that had real potential. As an erotic movie it is however decidedly limp. Possibly worth seeing if you’re a Sylvia Kristel completist but it’s difficult to recommend this one wholeheartedly.

Felicity (1978)

Felicity is a 1978 Australian Emmanuelle clone.

And when I say it’s an Emmanuelle clone I’m not kidding. It’s an absolute carbon copy of the Emmanuelle formula down to the smallest detail.

Emmanuelle had been an incredibly clever idea. The French believed that they had a surefire plan for taking advantage of the US X Certificate and making a ton of money. They would make a softcore porn movie but they had no interest in getting into grindhouses. They were going for the mainstream. A full-scale commercial release in major cinemas. They were aiming for the multiplexes. And how were they going to achieve this? Simple. They would make a softcore porn movie for women. It worked beyond their wildest imaginings. They didn’t just make a ton of money. They made many many tons of money. Emmanuelle proceeded to smash box-office records.

Not surprisingly the film spawned several official and countless unofficial sequels. It was not entirely surprising that Emmanuelle’s success would be noted in Australia where it was a massive hit. Producer-director John D. Lamond decided to jump on the bandwagon. His movie would not however be merely influenced by Emmanuelle. It would follow the formula in every single respect. It would be pretty much Emmanuelle Down Under.

There was more to the success of Emmanuelle than naked flesh. To appeal to women the production values had to be high, the cinematography had to be lush, there had to be an air of class about the production, there had to be beautiful and exotic locations, it had to be told entirely from a female perspective and the sex scenes had to be the kinds of sex scenes that women would like with the right mix of romance and stylish raunchiness.

John D. Lamond studied the blueprints and made sure that every element that had made Emmanuelle a success would be present in Felicity. Felicity looks much more expensive than it was and it looks fairly classy. Instead of Thailand it uses Hong Kong as the backdrop, which works just as well. The plot is the same - a sexually inexperienced young woman goes to the Mysterious Orient where she has a sexual awakening. The story is told from Felicity’s point of view. In fact she’s the narrator. There’s lots of steamy simulated sex with the right blend of romanticism and raunch.

The one thing Felicity doesn’t have is Sylvia Kristel. Kristel’s unconventional and exotic beauty and her overwhelming sexuality is certainly missed. On the other hand it has to be said that Felicity’s Glory Annen is very easy on the eye and she’s extremely good at combining innocence with wantonness. And she was a competent actress. She was actually Canadian but she does the Australian accent rather well (and it is unbelievably rare to find non-Australian actors who can do a convincing Australian accent). Lamond wanted her to sound like an educated cultured Australian (stop laughing, we do have such things here) and she manages it without any problems.

As the movie opens Felicity is a schoolgirl somewhere in eastern Australia. For some reason which I confess I didn’t quite grasp she is then whisked off to Hong Kong. Her first priority is obviously to lose her virginity and that is accomplished almost immediately.

Naturally, this being a softcore sex movie, Felicity will have to be initiated into the joys of lesbian sex. This is handled by hew new Hong Kong friend Me Ling (Joni Flynn). Me Ling is supposed to be Chinese while Joni Flynn is actually Indian but that’s a minor detail. Flynn isn’t much of an actress but her job is to be exotic, glamorous and sexy and to embody the dangerous but seductive flavour of the Orient, which she does. Who cares which part of the Orient she represents? And she has a whole bevy of naked young women with her to make sure that Felicity gets her initiation.

This is very firmly within the porn movie for women genre so there has to be a love story and that love story has to be central to the plot. That part of the movie succeeds well enough and it offers the chance for some very romantic sex scenes which presumably pleased the female audience. And insofar as the movie has any message it’s a surprisingly old-fashioned one. Felicity doesn’t just want to discover sex, she wants to discover love, and she finds out that sex is only good when it’s combined with love. For 1978 that’s a pretty extraordinarily traditional viewpoint for a porn movie to take.

Making a good softcore sex film as distinct from a routine one requires a bit of imagination. You wants to include lots of nudity and sex but you want to do so in a reasonably stylish way. Lamond clearly put some thought into this. Seeing a girl taking her panties off is sexy. Is there a way we can have Felicity taking her panties o0ff a dozen times in a few minutes. Yes there is! We’ll take her shopping for clothes. Naturally the first thing she wants to buy is new panties, but they have to be just right so she has to try on quite a few. And since we want to see how nice her new underwear looks there’s a perfect excuse for lots of close-ups of her nether regions, with and without panties.

It has to be said that Felicity is a remarkably clean girl. She seems to take a bath every five minutes. Since cleanliness is obviously very important to her it’s vital for us to see her take each and every bath. When it comes to finding ways to keep his lead actress naked for most of the film’s running time Lamond has few equals.

To give you an idea of just how closely this movie adheres to the Emmanuelle formula we see Glory Annen lounging naked in a cane chair that is almost identical to the one in which Sylvia Kristel lounged naked in Emmanuelle. In fact this was almost certainly intended as a deliberate homage. Just before the plane sex scene (of course there’s a plane sex scene since there was a very celebrated one in Emmanuelle) we see Felicity reading a copy of Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel on which Emmanuelle was based.

The Hong Kong setting works superbly. Watching the movie today it works even better since this is British Hong Kong, with all the glamour of a vanished world. Arguably it’s even more effective than the Thailand setting of Emmanuelle, Hong Kong at that time being an extraordinarily exciting (and decadent) place.

The visuals don’t quite have the lushness that Just Jaeckin brought to Emmanuelle but they’re stylish enough and there’s far more of a sense of vibrancy and excitement than in Emmanuelle.

The amount of nudity (including frontal nudity) in this movie is truly staggering. I don’t think we ever go more than a few minutes without another lingering loving shot of Felicity’s bare bottom.

Felicity certainly didn’t go anywhere near to equalling the immense commercial success of Emmanuelle but it did do extremely well in box-office terms, and apparently it did particularly well with women. According to Lamond Australian critics hated the film and were offended by its overt heterosexuality!

Umbrella’s Region 4 DVD offers a lovely anamorphic transfer and there are some very worthwhile extras including an audio commentary by director Lamond and star Glory Annen.

To me Felicity is in fact a more genuinely woman-centred erotic movie than Emmanuelle. It takes the Emmanuelle template but it adds a slightly different flavour - it’s definitely more straightforwardly romantic. Lamond obviously felt that if the movie was going to reach women it had to be tasteful and despite all the nudity and sex it really is tasteful. Luckily it succeeds in being  tasteful without sacrificing the eroticism. It also has playfulness, a few moments of humour and even perhaps just the tiniest touch of wit.

It’s very sexy in a very classy way and if that’s what you’re after then it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.