San Sebastian Film Festival Kicks Off With ‘Emmanuelle’ World Premiere

The 72nd San Sebastian Movie Competition is underway after the world premiere of Audrey Diwan‘s racy flick Emmanuelle kicked off the festivities in Spain.

The movie, which boasts stars reminiscent of Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Girl on Fireplace), Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive, Birdman), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Issues), is impressed by Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel. Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong spherical out the forged, all of whom, barring Watts, appeared briefly onstage earlier than the exhibiting on the metropolis’s Kursaal Theater.

The director’s mission facilities round a girl, Emmanuelle (Merlant), on a enterprise journey to Hong Kong working with a luxurious resort group. Looking for a misplaced pleasure, she seeks her arousal in experiences with among the resort’s company. One in every of them, Kei (Sharpe), appears to always elude her. Diwan has stated the script was conceived as an exploration of eroticism within the post-#MeToo period.

The French filmmaker, who co-wrote Emmanuelle with Rebecca Zlotowski, received Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion in 2021 for her movie Taking place. It marks one in all San Sebastian Movie Competition‘s glitziest-ever lineups, with honors for Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem and Pedro Almodóvar on the week’s agenda right here on the Spanish coast.

Almodóvar’s first English-language characteristic, The Room Subsequent Door, premiered to a whopping 17-minute standing ovation on the Venice Movie Competition earlier this month. The Spaniard dutifully thanked the gang because the movie’s stars, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, stood with him.

San Sebastian has additionally picked up some heavy hitters forward of awards season with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s We Reside in Time closing the fest, in addition to screenings of Edward Berger’s Conclave, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Sean Baker’s Anora.

Neon has been introduced to be circling U.S. distribution rights. Emmanuelle will get its theatrical launch in France on Sept. 25 by Pathé.