Emmanuelle Forever – Eternelle Emmanuelle (1993)

Directed by: Francis Leroi | 90 minutes | romance | Actors: Marcela Walerstein, George Lazenby, Sylvia Kristel, Joel Bui, Jay Hausman, Pham Duc-Tu, Daniel Hung Meas, Vibbe Haugaard, Toby Senegal, Sénégal Fratini, Natala Sevenants, Jean Pierre de Varenne, Robert Terry Lee, Corinne Mafiodo, Lauren Song

Because probably no one could keep count anymore, this umpteenth film in the Emmanuelle series was simply christened ‘Emmanuelle Forever’. Here we see the old Sylvia Kristel again as Emmanuelle, who tells her erotic adventures to a former lover during a plane trip. These adventures take place according to a tried and tested recipe in attractive locations: Tibet, Thailand, Scotland and the slightly less exotic Belgium, where our heroine enthusiastically throws herself into her job as an erotic aid worker. That youthful version of Emmanuelle is not played by Kristel, but by the young Marcela Walerstein.

Anyone watching the adventures of Emmanuelle in 2006 can hardly imagine that this series was once offensive. The sex scenes don’t differ in intensity from the sex scenes you see in mainstream movies now. It has nothing to do with the grim and mechanical of hardcore porn and genitals are nowhere to be seen. What we do see is a lot of nudity and a lot of good-natured sex, which often looks more like a sultry dance than an intense sex game.

All this does not make ‘Emmanuelle Forever’ a good film. The production suffers from the same ailments as most of its genre contemporaries: there is no story to be found and the acting is of a lousy level. Marcela Walerstein is a beautiful girl but as an actress she falls quite short. And that goes for the entire cast actually. For hard porn that is not such a problem, but ‘Emmanuelle Forever’ consists for a large part of dialogue, and that simply requires a bit more acting talent.

All in all, in this internet age there will be few who get very excited about ‘Emmanuelle Forever’. In a world of sexcams, online porn and weblog outpourings, Emmanuelle seems like a phenomenon from another time and another world. What was once called a shame is now rather cute. A cute girl who goes on all kinds of naughty adventures with the help of a magic potion and helps her friends in the process. Pretty sweet right?