Forever Emmanuelle: Sylvia Kristel and Soft-Core Cult Stardom

Abstract

My interest in Sylvia Kristel lies in the fact that although she far outdistances Brigitte Bardot as the top-grossing female actress of all time in France (Dehée 2009: 360) and has appeared in over fifty international productions, including a spell in Hollywood, she never achieved popular stardom and her standing in mainstream film histories is at best peripheral, worthy of a line or two (she is a notable absence from the otherwise excellent edited collection on European actors in Hollywood, Journeys of Desire [2006]). Kristel was propelled to stardom when she appeared in Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle (1974), the controversial but highly popular low-budget screen adaptation of Emmanuelle Arsan’s eponymous novel about the sexual initiation of a young diplomat’s wife. The top grossing production of its year in France with nearly nine million spectators (Prédal 1991: 404), the film played continuously at the luxurious Triomphe cinema on the Champ-Elysées, one of the most prestigious avenues in Paris, where it would remain for thirteen years with English subtitles and an enormous billboard featuring a provocative Kristel sitting topless in a cane chair staring at the camera. Emmanuelle was such a social phenomenon at the time that travel agencies included the film in their Paris itineraries: Sacré-Coeur, Moulin-Rouge, Emmanuelle on the Champs-Elysées.