My teenage crush in High School was Emmanuelle. I was somewhat aware of the film Emmanuelle due to the movie poster and the soundtrack that a girlfriend had in her possession. The film came out in 1974, but I think I saw it at some revival theater in Los Angeles ten years later. Somehow, I picked up the vibe of Emmanuelle via the image of its star, Sylvia Kristel, sitting on a straw rattan chair with pearls around her naked torso. Around the same time, my lesbian friend collected images of female Euro-sex stars, and even she didn’t see the film. But she would play me the soundtrack by Pierre Bachelet and Hervé Roy, which conveyed images of my head of Emmanuelle having one sexual exchange after another. Also, the fact that the album is the same song with different arrangements had a pull for me.
Emmanuelle has always been somewhere in my DNA, and decades later, I found a used copy of the novel by Emanuelle Arsan. She is from Thailand, and her birth name is Marayat Bibidh. Her parents sent her to Switzerland to attend the school Institut Le Rosey, founded in 1880 on the 14th-century Chateau de Rosey site. At a dance there, the 16-year-old student met 30-year-old Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, a diplomat for UNESCO. They connected instantly, and in 1956, they got married. Their first home together was in Thailand, where Louis-Jacques worked, and he and Marayat were into an open marriage.
Along with others of such professions as diplomats, interlopers, and jet-setters, they developed a community of swingers. They found a guru of sorts in Prince Alessandro Ruspoli, known as Dado. A sometimes actor but mostly a playboy, Dado became the high priest of love to Louis-Jacques and Marayat. In 1963, the couple moved to Italy, where they spent serious time with Dado, who introduced them to a Libertine style of the good life.
The novel Emmanuelle was published secretly and sold through the underground in Paris in 1962. The book came out officially in 1967 in France and was published and translated into English in 1971. The book is credited to Emmanuelle Arsan, who happens to be Marayat. I read the book, and it’s a strange hybrid of a dirty book and philosophy. There are quotes from Mallarme, Artaud, and Nietzsche, among others. So, it’s eros for smarty-pants like me, but with a Swinger vibe that is socially provocative for a specific type of society. As the story is told through Marayat’s eyes, I, of course, was happy that a sometimes actress and wife of a diplomat wrote this type of literature. Alias, it is more likely that her husband, Louis-Jacques, wrote it. A Diplomat must be aware of the differences between cultures and understand that communication is the key to one’s success. Emmanuelle is not that different from the late 19th-century writer Pierre Loti, who put the exotic into exotica. The reader is a tourist in a made-up world, or if we are to believe, a landscape of the wealthy who can do what they damn want to do.
As mentioned, sexuality always has a theatrical aspect to its desire. A mystery drags one to a world that looks familiar but yet becomes erotically charged. A conversation can lead one to another level of a relationship that wasn’t expected when you entered that room. Seduction works best when one is unaware of one's actions, yet the communication is full of promise of leaving this world for another that is a mixture of the spiritual and its pleasures. Emmanuelle Arsan’s book is based on an identity upon another identity, which the author’s husband may have made out. In that sense, sexuality is tied to being a consumer in a setting that is designed by the ideal product, which is the promise that Emmanuelle exists. Both the author and character are in the book and film as well.
I love the premise and ideal of such a book as Emmanuelle, but the truth is that it is not a good book or work of literature. It’s not even a good dirty book. However, the packaging and culture of Emmanuelle are a fantasy that I think many men of a specific age desire. However, is that sensuality shared with female readers? Marquis de Sade is an author who wrote dirty books. But when you look at him and his time of the French Revolution, and before and after that, his sexuality and fantasies play an essential part in a critique of French society. Or the by-product of such a system that is Sade’s world within a world. Emmanuelle belongs to the modern age, and it hints toward Sade’s views of society, but in reality, it’s something marketable for middle-aged horny men. It is strictly a tourist’s view of sexuality and geared toward the gentleman or lady who wants to expand their world into something more enticing and promising of sensual happiness. It’s a difficult product to put aside. Therefore, I purchased and read a used copy of Emmanuelle by Marayat Bibidh, aka Emanuelle Arsan. And we shouldn’t forget Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane.
Above Photograph of Emanuelle Arsan by Nik Wheeler (Gettyimages)
I remember watching Emmanuelle sometime in the 1990s and, being kind of a motorhead, coveting most the lime green 1961 Jauguar E-type drophead roadster - love the way the Brits call a convertible "drophead". And who can forget Emmanuelle Arsan in The Sand Pebbles - right there with Bullitt as one of my favorite McQueen movies. It featured another bitchin' car, a 1968 Ford Mustang GT; however, in that one I coveted Jacqueline Bisset.
I'm not sure what all that means but thanks for the memories...
Tosh, Marayat the female incarnation of Emmanuel’s was a very close friend of mine and on the infamous Playboy spoof photo shoot at Villa Medici in Rome you will see her cavorting in the nude with me in most of the pictures. As you quite rightly reported Louis Jacques her husband was the author but she supplied a lot from her female perspective. The original is written in French and is actually well written. The English translation might leave much to be desired.