Page 151 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

Her fingers were as deft, skilled and efficient as her tongue. They grazed Emmanuelle s clitoris,
then both hands, held together, plunged resolutely into the depths of her flesh, stretching the
walls of her vagina and massaging the resistant protuberance of her womb with admirable
animation and discernment. She let herself be drawn into orgasm without resistance, gather
her strength to make her pleasure as intense as possible, opening herself and thrusting against
the hand that was probing her."
Such is the tone of erotic passages throughout the novel, thick with euphemism and simile.
The books second movement concerns Emmanuelle's realisation of purpose from Mario's
direction when he explains, 'the only art that's not futile is the story of your body'. 12 Eventually
suggesting she embrace the unusual, asymmetric, numerous, situational and the abnormal, his is
a method of evolution. As he comments in the novel: 'Eroticism is not a handbook of recipes for
amusing yourself [sic]. It's a concept of human destiny, a gauge, a canon, a code, a ceremony, an art,
a school. It's also a science.'" Moreover, he believes that 'the art of erotic pleasute is what matters and
that we must constantly offer ourselves, give ourselves, unite our bodies with more and more bodies,
and count all time spent out of their arms as wasted'.14
Acting on his thesis, Emmanuelle reaches the natural conclusion of her empowerment in the arms
of two simultaneous lovers:

The sam-lo's hands pressed Emmanuelle's breasts and she sobbed with pleasute, arching her
back to let him enter her more deeply, panting that she was happier than she could stand
and begging him to tear her, not to spare her, to come in her. Mario sensed that the sam-
los endurance was inexhaustible, but he himself could hold back no longer. He sank his
fingernails into his partner's flesh, as though giving him a signal. The two men ejaculated
simultaneously, the sam-lo into the depths of Emmanuelle's body, feeling himself invaded at

the same time by another outpouring. 15

Given such heroic sex play, Emmanuelle is a complicated palimpsest of cheap thrills and lofty
ambitions. Firstly concerned with carnal pleasure, it turns into a lengthy treatise on bourgeois
morality before exploding that morality through drug use, paedophilia and sexual orgy.
Emmanuelle's phenomenal success also meant it was a naturally pedigreed source for aspirant
filmmakers. If nothing more than a well-written 'stroke book', it pays lip service to feminism's
concerns over sexual identity and the subversion of patriarchy. At the same time, its representations
were designed so as not to alienate conservative readers primarily interested in erections, vaginas,
bosoms and body fluids.
After movie producer Yves Rousset-Rouard optioned the novel, it entered a cinematic context
emptied by the breakdown of Hollywood's global hegemony before the blockbuster renewal of the
mid-1970s. Space was therefore available in theatres and it was filled with works from many national
contexts produced by opportunists, speculators and filmmakers capable of working against the
conventional view in an industrial circumstance ready to receive them.

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