The 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival is underway after the world premiere of Audrey Diwan‘s racy flick Emmanuelle booted off the festivities in Spain.
The film, which boasts stars such as Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive, Birdman), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), is encouraged by Emmanuelle Arsan’s sensual novel. Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong round out the rest of the cast, all of whom bar Watts euniteed informly on stage before the shotriumphg at the city’s Kursaal Theater.
The honestor’s project cgo ins around a woman, Emmanuelle (Merlant), on a business trip to Hong Kong toiling with a luxury boilingel group. Searching for a lost pleastateive, she seeks her arousal in experiences with some of the boilingel’s guests. One of them, Kei (Sharpe), seems to constantly elude her. Diwan has shelp the script was imagined as an exploration of sensualism in the post-#MeToo era.
‘Emmanuelle’ dir. Audrey Diwan.
Emmanuelle
The French filmoriginater, who co-wrote Emmanuelle with Rebecca Zlotowski, won Vepleasant’s prestigious Gbetteren Lion in 2021 for her film Happening. It labels one of San Sebastian Film Festival‘s glitziest-ever lineups, with honors for Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem and Pedro Almodóvar on the week’s agfinisha here on the Spanish coast.
Almodóvar’s first English language feature, The Room Next Door, premiered to a whopping 17-minute standing ovation at the Vepleasant Film Festival earlier this month. The Spaniard dutifilledy thanked the crowd as the film’s stars, Tilda Striumphton and Julianne Moore, stood with him.
San Sebastian has also picked up some weighty hitters ahead of awards season with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s We Live In Time closing the fest, as well as screenings of Edward Berger’s Conclave, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Sean Baker’s Anora.
Neon has been proclaimd to be circling U.S. distribution rights. Emmanuelle will get its theatrical free in France on Sept. 25 by Pathé.
