Noémie Merlant, Naomi Watts and Will Sharpe languish in a luxurious hotel in Audrey Diwan’s self-conscious remake of the classic French softcore drama

If anyone could have rebooted and revitalised the much-mocked 70s softcore-sexy franchise Emmanuelle, you would think it would be that formidably smart film-maker Audrey Diwan, winner of the Venice Golden Lion for her drama Happening. In the porn-chic era of 1974, Emmanuelle was an odyssey of saucy self-awakening which featured Sylvia Kristel seated on the iconic rattan chair, and was directed by Just Jaeckin, the man with the most outrageous name in adult entertainment. In theory, this meisterwerk is ripe for reinvention as a spectacle of unapologetic sensuality in our new world of the sex-positive and kitsch-positive.

But even with Noémie Merlant as her lead and no less a film-maker than Rebecca Zlotowski working with Diwan on the screenplay, this Emmanuelle 2.0 comes across as inert and self-conscious, confusing torpor with languor, and endowing the non-sex scenes and also the sex scenes with blankness rather than tension or anticipation or pleasure.