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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...

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,...