EXCLUDED – First photo of Emmanuelle with Noémie Merlant

“Female pleasure is a little-known territory that I wanted to explore,” Audrey Diwan tells us.

Two years after his Golden Lion for The Event, Audrey Diwan has chosen for its third feature film to go in a completely different direction, with the writing assistance of Rebecca Zlotowski. Everything starts fromEmmanuellethe erotic novel by Emmanuelle Arsan, first published anonymously in 1959.

Because before being an erotic film series from the 70s, Emmanuelle was therefore a book, cult and cult, which told the story of a young French woman married to a diplomat and expatriated to Bangkok. Between boredom and vaporous reverie, the young woman wastes away until she meets Mario, who then becomes her initiatory guide and succeeds in convincing her to open up to pleasure.

At the border of the philosophical essay (on the exploration of female pleasure), the story of empowerment (feminine, necessarily feminine) and the political vademecum, Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel invented a character of a woman as attractive as she is free, explorer of pleasure and enjoyment in all its dimensions (spiritual as well as social).

It is precisely this heroine that Audrey Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski have chosen to reinterpret in their film which will therefore be neither a new adaptation nor a remake. As the filmmaker confides in the issue of Première which comes out this Wednesday on newsstands (with an exclusive first photo from the film), “female pleasure is a little-known territory that I wanted to explore“.

And to carry out this exploration, she chose Noémie Merlant. The actress took up the challenge of playing the perilous title role, in the middle of an international casting, where she will rub shoulders in particular with Naomi Watts, Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) or Anthony Wong (Unfailingly, Infernal affairs).

No release date has been set yet, but with such promise and such an exciting cast, Emmanuelle could well aim Cannes 2024…

Find Emmanuelle and many other films from the coming months in the new issue of First special previews 2024. On newsstands this Wednesday, December 20.