Forget the cliché of Emmanuelle in her rattan armchair… Discover the 2024 version with Noémie Merlant. The first photo has finally arrived. The international casting has also been clarified.
End of filming for one of the most anticipated films of 2024! Emmanuelle version 2024, by Audrey Diwan, was filmed in Hong Kong and Paris, in English. Taken from the sulfurous novel by Emmanuelle Arsan, this project will deliver a new vision of this work.
If we knew that the title role would be played by Noémie Merlant, until now we knew very little about the casting and the plot.
The veil is lifted a little thanks to Deadline who was able to speak with the director, and on this occasion shares the very first official photo of the film.
In addition to Naomi Watts, whose name was recently revealed in the cast, we now know that Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) will play the male lead role. Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), Chacha Huang (La Casa de Papel) and Anthony Wong (Infernal Affairs) will also be in the credits.
Pathé
The synopsis is still secret, but Audrey Diwan, who wrote the screenplay, with the collaboration of Rebecca Zlotowski, made it clear that she started from the original book. This is not a direct remake of Just Jaeckin’s film.
We know that it will be a contemporary film whose action will take place in a luxury hotel, in which Emmanuelle’s character works. She there “will explore his quest for pleasure“. It is specified that, unlike the original film, this will not be a quest for “discovery“pleasure, but of a”research” some pleasure.
Noémie Merlant has a string of successes and great roles: we saw her in L’Innocent by Louis Garrel, in a lovely comic score (and a César to boot), and in 2023, in a major role with Cate Blanchett, in the American film Tár by Todd Field, but also in Les Ames Noirs by André Téchiné (video interview above), currently broadcast on Canal+ / myCANAL.
More recently, she was part of the trio of A Difficult Year, with Pio Marmaï and Jonathan Cohen.
Noémie Merlant talks to us about all these films in the podcast interview below:
“I feel that there is risk taking, but at the same time, I like to take risks. It’s almost what I prefer. (…) From this woman’s point of view, connecting to her desire, to her sexuality, to her fantasies… That interests me.
There are risks to take, but very interesting and liberating“, Noémie Merlant told us about Emmanuelle in our interview last April.
“Emmanuelle, the first sex film to become cult!”
Prohibited for those under 16 at the time of its release, the original 1974 film followed Emmanuelle, a young woman who lives very liberatedly with her husband Jean. During the trip that takes her to Bangkok to join her husband, Emmanuelle meets two men on the plane and indulges in some fleeting pleasures.
During her stay, she meets two young girls, Marie-Ange and Bee, with whom she has an affair. Jean, for his part, decides to push Emmanuelle into the arms of a perverted sixty-year-old…
Emmanuel version 1974 had become a real phenomenon in theaters at the time, attracting more than 8.8 million spectators. The release date of this new Emmanuelle Audrey Diwan version is not yet known.