Get to know every inch of Sylvia Kristel’s soft, skinny body as she gets to know herself through having sex with half of Bangkok. And if you see another cute girl in this movie, she’s gonna get naked, too. Just give her a few minutes. French sexploitation master Just Jaeckin can find an excuse to get anybody out of their clothes. He’s good.
This is a relic of a time when pornography got respect, but yet wasn’t so mainstream that filmmakers could just start shooting jizz at Julie Christie. So God invented the softcore film, which was usually well-made, competently acted and held back on the fluids and penetration. At their most definitive (and Emmanuelle is easily one of those), these films carried the pretense of art. These were date movies. Women liked them. Some critics liked them, too. At the very least, everybody had to marvel at the scene here where a nude dancer smokes a cigarette with her snatch (that girl, whoever she is, should have gotten a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination). This one even got released by Columbia Pictures (in the US) after the film proved to be an international sensation.
This was the start of a whole series that took Emmanuelle into sexual adventures all over the world and even into space and forever ruined the name “Emmanuelle” for following generations.