Review of Emmanuelle IV

Emmanuelle IV (1984)
5/10
New Emmanuelle and the dough boys
28 September 2008
Warning: Spoilers
This misguided attempt to revive the "official" Emmanuelle series seven years after the third entry, vainly entitled Goodbye Emmanuelle, is by turns boring, confusing and deliriously camp. The ludicrous plot has the original Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristel running to Brazil to escape a man who she has an obsessive relationship with, there undergoing some serious plastic surgery to make her 10 years younger, thus allowing Mia Nygen to take over the role. Nygen is absolutely gorgeous, though devoid of acting talent or personality. The "new" Emmanuelle takes part in various swinging sessions and orgies with a plethora of tanned men before getting back with her old lover, who doesn't realise who she is but feels oddly the same about her.

The story is a load of stuff and nonsense, made even more ridiculous by the travelogue nature of the scenario (each scene is set in a different city), incessant and pretentious voice-over narration and a couple of very peculiar abstract dream (are they?) sequences in which Kristel re-appears to instruct on the best way to arouse a man - "Boys are like dough. There is a certain way of touching them that will make them rise." The sexual action is softcore (although apparently some of this was filmed as a hardcore movie), and much of it consists of a lone woman playing the voyeur to some bonking session and then giving herself a good frig. The men, being mostly fit young Brazilians, are surprisingly attractive for a straight softcore film of the era; the scene where a young horse-riding knave smacks his brother's errant girlfriend up before roughly taking new Emmanuelle to the stables is pretty hot. The most eye-popping sequence has new Emmanuelle being chased through a slum by a gang of horny youths - she grabs the "most animalistic" of them and, as he shoves her to the ground and climbs on top of her, she narrates the immortal lines "Lying on that rubbish dump, with that brute on top of me, I experienced the most intense climax of my life." You go girl! Emmanuelle 4 certainly lacks the visual splendour or philosophical and emotional nuances of the original trilogy; what's left is so off the wall and absurd that it's an absolute scream. Indefensible but, in its own way, fairly memorable. It would have been even more hilarious in its original 3D cinema release...
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