Latest news with #Emmanuelle
Times
29-07-2025
- Health
- Times
The ultimate bridal beauty prep plan
There are a lot of things to consider before your wedding, not least how you would like to look when you tie the knot — and in the wedding photos that will be hanging about for years to come. But if you indulge in a few of the following treatments in the lead-up to your wedding it's pretty certain you'll be even more glowing and gorgeous than normal. These are also useful treatments for everyone in the bride's environs, whether that be the mother of the bride, the maid of honour or even a wedding guest who wants to look particularly captivating for the crush they haven't seen in years. • This article contains affiliate links that will earn us revenue Lymphatic drainage massage is a helpful way to combat puffiness, bloating and inflammation. Operating out of the cult beauty destination French Pharmacy, off Marylebone High Street, Rebecca Trévalinet offers traditional Brazilian lymphatic drainage massages. She also offers a unique technique, the Méthode Trévalinet, which she created with her mother, Emmanuelle, also a lymphatic drainage specialist. Both methods use firm sweeping and pumping motions to help stimulate your lymphatic system and tackle fluid build-up in areas like ankles and the stomach. The Méthode Trévalinet combines this technique with elements inspired by traditional Chinese medicine and acupressure for added benefit. You can now also buy a chic dry brush designed by Trévalinet and Altesse Studio so you can keep up your lymph-draining practices between sessions. Recommended treatment For best results a course of five consecutive weekly sessions, with the final session one day before the wedding. Effects can last up to 48 hours, although frequent visits can extend the length of these, Trévalinet says Renata França massage from £150, Méthode Trévalinet from £180; to book email LPG Endermologie is a body-sculpting technique using a machine fitted with rollers that glide over the skin in a sort of mechanical massage. The rollers grab and release and feel like suction, while the gliding motions are aided by the full-body leotard that clients wear, so that it massages without pinching the skin. This treatment has multiple functions, among them aiding in muscle toning and relaxation as well as settings that are designed specifically to tackle cellulite. It can also support your body's lymphatic flow, helping to drain areas with excess fluid retention. The machine has various settings, though most have medium to firm pressure. For many the tightening and toning results can be seen after only one session. A 2009 study for US's National Institutes for Health found that LPG treatments 'showed a significant circumference loss at every measured body site' in those who used it. The machine also has a setting for the face that uses small plastic prongs to create the same massaging effect, though this has a much lighter feel than the body technique. Dr Galyna Selezneva has been one of London's most in-demand beauty specialists for over 20 years. This year Selezneva opened an outpost at the Lanesborough hotel, where, alongside her colleague Justyna Bartosiewicz, she offers LPG sessions alongside a host of other aesthetics treatments. Selezneva's clinic is also home to the latest machine from LPG — the Infinity, which has been fitted with an additional roller as well as more precise settings to produce even quicker sculpting results. Recommended treatment 10 sessions 1-2 times per week, beginning 3 months before your wedding 60-minute treatment, £300; A session of Thermage FLX delivers patented radiofrequency energy and heat to the skin to help tackle crepiness and cellulite. The machine apparently works by heating the skin so that the water molecules separates from the existing collagen in the epidermis. This helps to encourage contraction, which can lead to skin tightening. This is an FDA-approved noninvasive treatment that should lead to gradually improvements over the course of six months, according to Montrose Clinics in Belgravia. The best part is there is little to no downtime, and you only need to visit once a year for the best results. Recommended treatment 3-4 months before the wedding for most visible results Treatment begins at £1,800; A functional medicine practitioner with over 13 years of experience, Lelani Loubser is the person to see if you're serious about getting your nutrition in order ahead of your wedding. She's based at the HVN in Belgravia, where, as live streamed birdsong from the New Forest plays around you, you can learn from her about the best ways to support your body's health through food and lifestyle, rather than succumb to crash dieting fads. Loubser is a qualified nutritional therapist and naturopath with a special interest in women's health, and because of this her advice goes far beyond just 'eating less and working out more'. Instead she works with her clients to address root causes like gut issues using natural methods, with the aim that by the time your wedding rolls around you'll not only look great but feel great too. Recommended treatment At least 3 months before wedding Baseline four-week wellness programme, £999; No one wants tense muscles on their big day, and one of the best ways to tackle them is to work with your fascia. These are the network of connective tissues that surround and hold bones and muscles in place. Those who know how to work with fascia say they are able to help address years of chronic muscle aches and tension through fascial release. Practitioners say posture can also be improved via such work as injuries and a history of bad posture can cause fascia to adapt to the wrong positioning in your body and create longer-term restriction. Deodata Semionovaite offers fascial release during her Body Re-Alignment treatment at Rebase Recovery in Marylebone. The treatment feels like a deep tissue massage, but using fascial release and acupressure points to alleviate muscle tension. She reckons this technique can also release trauma that has been stored in the body and can have a positive effect on your nervous system overall. Her massages not only tackle muscle tightness, but may also be a useful tool to manage some of the intense emotions that big events like weddings can bring up in your body. While Semionovaite also offers lymphatic drainage treatments, she says, 'I believe real transformation, the kind that brings out true radiance, comes from working through the body's fascia and addressing stored emotions. Brides often describe feeling not only physically lighter, but more confident and aligned, inside and out, after the treatment.' Recommended treatment 3–6 sessions, ideally starting 1–3 months before the wedding 60-minute session £195; In just 30 minutes the Ultraclear laser can tackle everything from scarring and acne to melasma and wrinkles using its cold fibre laser technology. This new-gen laser uses a smaller, more targeted beam, which means distributing less heat than previous lasers and as a result can be less painful and irritating to the skin. Because it uses heat in a more controlled way it's suitable for a large variety of skin types. The laser only penetrates the top 15 per cent of your skin, meaning it is also a treatment with minimal downtime. It has been reported to have low levels of discomfort — Dr David Jack's Harley Street clinic gives it a rating of two out of five in terms of pain. The clinic says the result of the 3DMIRACL laser is a brightened and more even texture for your skin, which can be seen after just one session. Recommended treatment 1 session 6 weeks before your wedding. £900 per session; For those who are wary of injectables and would rather stick to treatments that are noninvasive, the LipLase is an option. The treatment aims to bring more fullness to your lips by stimulating your natural collagen through heating the deeper layers of the skin with a laser. This triggers the body's natural healing response and can apparently deliver a plumper appearance. The laser's design means it can do this gently enough not to affect the surface layers of the lip, which should entail little to no downtime. Sessions last 45 minutes and the results are gradual, which can be a helpful guardrail. No one wants duck lips on their wedding day. Recommended treatment 4 treatments 2-3 weeks apart. Final session at least 2 weeks before wedding £300 per session; Natasha Clancy, the owner of Kichi Studio, offers a menu of targeted treatments that can address everything from redness to acne and wrinkles. Her BabyFace facial is the pre-event treatment of choice for celebrities from Sienna Miller to Lily James. Iris Law has counted it as one of her favourites. According to Clancy, BabyFace was one of the ways she helped to treat Law's acne scarring and strengthen the health of her skin over multiple sessions, though Clancy says you can expect a real glow and more even complexion from just one visit. The LaseMD Ultra laser creates micro-channels in the skin that allow for better absorption of the custom-made serum, which is applied afterwards and includes blends of retinol, Vitamin C or tranexamic acid depending on your skin's needs. The treatment begins with a numbing cream application and then 20 minutes under an infrared LED light while the numbing kicks in, before the five-minute laser application. The treatment is suitable for all skin types and Clancy says the benefits can last up to eight weeks, so the glow can last you through the honeymoon as well. Recommended treatment Optimal glow begins at day 10. 1-3 treatments before wedding recommended £500 per session; This pre-wedding treatment is recommended by the German dermatologist Dr Barbara Sturm's team as the final prep step before your big day. The 75-minute facial uses Dr Sturm's products, which focus on ingredients that combat inflammation including an enzyme cleanser, balancing toner and glow cream. It also involves the Star Face wand, a noninvasive device that fluctuates between heating and cooling the skin. This process is called 'thermal shock' and, according to the brand, can help with inflammation, blood flow stimulation and can support collagen and elastin production. The result is dewy, hydrated skin that will be a perfect base for your wedding make-up. Recommended treatment Day before wedding £375; One of London's top hair specialists, Ricardo Vila Nova deals specifically in hair thickening from his studio on Harrods fifth floor. There the Portuguese trichologist, who has a background in biochemistry, focuses on scalp health in a salon setting, offering a bespoke approach for each of his clients. The process begins with an examination of the client's hair under a microscope, helping Vila Nova to scan the hair for proteins and learn whether the root cause of hair thinning may be hormonal or genetic. A detoxing scalp treatment using products formulated especially for the individual, time under the salon's steamer and its high-powered LTT laser (a more potent LED lamp) are all prescribed, before clients are sent off with a bouncy blowout and a bespoke shampoo and conditioner combination made to help them keep working on their growth from home. Vila Nova says that within four months clients should see the difference, with thicker and healthier hair. Recommended treatment Minimum 4 months before wedding, 1 treatment per month Initial hair scan begins at £185; Finding the perfect cut and colour for your hair on a normal day can feel like a hefty task, let alone the colour and cut that will live on (and on and on) in the photos from the wedding. To help achieve the perfect look, visit George Northwood. He is behind Alexa Chung's famed 'lob' and is a favourite of Poppy Delevingne and Gwyneth Paltrow. Brides can be sure they're in good hands knowing he was the stylist for Meghan Markle's evening hair on her wedding day. Northwood's approach to styling helps to create current, chic looks that also feel timeless. This means you won't have to worry that your haircut for your wedding will look out of date when you look at the photos in ten years' time. Northwood's eponymous salon is also home to some of London's best colourists. For blonde brides looking for a natural tone, Martha Braintree is the person to see. She uses both foils and balayage to find the perfect shade for each of her clients and, should you so desire, adds these in such a way that they'll look good even as they grow out. Recommended treatment 1 week POA, Nails are an important element of your wedding look. How will you lift your veil, hold your bouquet or receive your wedding ring in a chic manner if your nails are not done with expert precision? For all your wedding manicure needs the person to see is Julia Diogo. Known as @paintedbyjools on Instagram, she has a following of over 88k, and has worked with Chanel, Dior and Soho House among other brands. She is known for her meticulous polish and cuticle work, and has a focus on natural nail health. Diogo uses a range of skin exfoliation and moisturising techniques during her treatments to help keep hands looking healthy and recommends a routine so you can support your hands and nails between manicures with her. She will also use polishes designed to strengthen weakened nails such as Essie's To The Rescue, while nursing damaged nails back to health. Recommended treatment Weekly, beginning 3 months before wedding, for optimal nail strength Manicures begin at £250; to book email bookings@
Geek Tyrant
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Trailer For The Sultry Erotic Drama EMMANUELLE Starring Noémie Merlant and Naomi Watts — GeekTyrant
Here's the trailer for and sultry erotic drama titled Emmanuelle , which is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan's beloved cult novel. It's kind of fun, because while watching this trailer made me think of the fake Seinfeld movie Rochelle Rochelle . The film stars Noémie Merlant as Emmanuelle, who 'is in search of a lost pleasure. She flies alone to Hong Kong on a business trip. In this sensual global city, where she initiates numerous encounters, she also meets Kei, a man who constantly eludes her. 'Audrey Diwan's latest film, freely adapted from Emmanuelle Arsan's novel, casts a female gaze on the intimate quest of the woman whose name still evokes one cinema's most provocative characters.' The movie also stars with Naomi Watts, Will Sharpe, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang, and Anthony Wong. This premiered last year but was met with mostly negative reviews. It was directed by Audrey Diwan and will get a direct-to-VOD release on June 6th, 2025.
The Age
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Sex kitten Emmanuelle returns as a sad product of modern sexuality
It is hard to imagine now, when any kind of pornography is just a click away, what an impact Emmanuelle had on its release in 1974. The breathy, gauzy account of the sexual misadventures of a young French expatriate wife in Bangkok was not the first soft-porn film to jump into the mainstream – the more explicit Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door beat it by a couple of years – but it was altogether a more beautiful package. It was also a hit, reaching number three at the US box office that year. Numerous sequels and knock-offs followed, while the original continued to be shown at a cinema in the Champs Elysees for 13 years. Why did it work? Emmanuelle was based on a trashy novel, first published in 1959, by a pseudonymous 'Emmanuelle Arsan' who later turned out to be a French diplomat stationed in Thailand, presumably with time on his hands. It wasn't a good film. It was atrociously dubbed. But it had high production values, exotic cultural notes, some solemn theorising about the nature of the erotic (giving it a drop of European seriousness) and winsome Sylvia Kristel – a Dutch model who wanted to break into acting – under the camera's constant caress. Emmanuelle 's endless simulated sexual encounters look astonishingly cheesy now. They are also unmistakably a male fantasy: a woman's supposed sensual awakening entirely orchestrated by the men around her. At first, she fiddles with other trophy wives, before being taken up by an elderly roué who steers her to an opium den where he invites a couple of patrons to rape her. Kristel argued against this scene, which now looks as dreadful as it sounds, but director Just Jaeckin said they had to do it because it was in the book. He said later he just wanted to make 'something soft and beautiful, with a nice story'. While Kristel would star in three sequels, he refused to make another one. Emmanuelle was not the springboard either had imagined; Kristel was never taken seriously as an actor, while Jaeckin's career as a photographer was permanently stunted by his brush with the raincoat brigade. Given this history – not to mention the convulsions in gender politics of the intervening 50 years – it was certainly a surprise when Emmanuelle was revived by French producers, this time to be directed by the impeccably feminist Audrey Diwan. It was a bold idea. Diwan won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 with The Happening, a powerful film about a young woman seeking an abortion in provincial France in the early '60s. She came to Emmanuelle, she says, from a position of relative ignorance. To this day, she has seen only 20 minutes of Jaeckin's Vaseline fantasy. 'I clearly understood this wasn't made for me as an audience, like I was not invited,' she said at last September's San Sebastian Film Festival, where her film screened on opening night. She was intrigued, however, by the idea of discussing the erotic from a woman's point of view, still more by the challenge of finding a cinematic language that would make that possible for modern audiences. 'The movie of the '70s was strong because it was about opening the frame. Whereas I want to restrain the frame. Now everyone can see everything, does it still work? That was the first thing.' She read the book, then let the character – or whatever Emmanuelle might become – sit with her. In the script she eventually wrote with Rebecca Zlotowski, Emmanuelle is no longer a trophy wife. Now played by Noemie Merlant, she has a high-flying job – literally – visiting and evaluating luxury hotels, where armies of service workers ensure that every detail of life in the bubble is perfect. Her destination is not languorous Thailand but bustling Hong Kong, where she is tasked with finding a reason to sack the Rosefield Hotel's manager Margot (Naomi Watts). On the way, in an echo of the opening scene in the first film, she has sex with a stranger in the plane's toilet. The original Emmanuelle declared herself only interested in pursuing pleasure. In Diwan's film, she grits her teeth through the act, then returns to her seat with an expression of dull disappointment. The former sex kitten is now a picture of emptiness. Merlant, who is most immediately recognisable as the feisty painter in Portrait of a Woman on Fire, says she immediately recognised herself in the new Emmanuelle. 'At the beginning of the movie, you have this woman who did not feel anything belonged to her, including her body,' she says. 'She doesn't get pleasure; she tries to make others satisfied. She is a robot. For me, it makes a lot of sense, so I said yes.' Merlant started modelling when she was 17. On her first job, she was sexually assaulted; when she told her agents what had happened, she was told it was her fault for not refusing clearly enough. This must be adult life, she decided; she would have to protect herself. Like Emmanuelle, she says, she shut down. 'For years I couldn't cry any more. It's like the only place I could cry was when I was shooting in films. And laugh. Like I could be alive only when I was shooting.' She played another role in everyday life. 'The role society gave me when I was young, the role I played for others, for men, not for myself.' What she wanted in reality, she says, eluded her. 'We have been used for men's pleasure for centuries,' she says. 'We don't even know what we want. That's what I felt. With the #MeToo movement, I realised that things were not right.' Emmanuelle's quest is to find her way back to her own desire. ''How do I get there? It takes time and then I'm going to say what I want out loud.' This was very strong for me.' Watching Emmanuelle drift to the toilet on the plane is Kei (The White Lotus ' Will Sharpe), a Japanese engineer whom she later meets in the hotel. He is as sexually numb as she is, but he is interested in her life; he questions her with gentle curiosity, peeling away her layers of icy control. Like the raddled Mario in the first Emmanuelle, he introduces her to an Asian underbelly of grubby, druggy mahjong dens, a world away from the opulent artificiality of the hotel. Unlike Mario, he is not a voyeur or a sadist. 'He is here for her, he wants her to have space,' says Merlant. 'He is a listener. And, most of the time, we are not listened to.' When her Emmanuelle does say what she wants, it is as if a wall has crumbled. Loading The new Emmanuelle was rejected by the bigger festivals, Cannes and Venice; when it finally had its premiere, some reviews were startlingly vicious. 'I think people are not happy to see a movie where Emmanuelle is sad and empty,' says Merlant. Diwan says, however, that younger generations – for whom '70s nostalgia means nothing – relate strongly to the characters' loneliness. Many say they don't want to have sex at all, which she puts down to fear: they are afraid of falling short of their online images. Maybe they are as sad as Emmanuelle; at least we can talk about it.
Sydney Morning Herald
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Sex kitten Emmanuelle returns as a sad product of modern sexuality
It is hard to imagine now, when any kind of pornography is just a click away, what an impact Emmanuelle had on its release in 1974. The breathy, gauzy account of the sexual misadventures of a young French expatriate wife in Bangkok was not the first soft-porn film to jump into the mainstream – the more explicit Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door beat it by a couple of years – but it was altogether a more beautiful package. It was also a hit, reaching number three at the US box office that year. Numerous sequels and knock-offs followed, while the original continued to be shown at a cinema in the Champs Elysees for 13 years. Why did it work? Emmanuelle was based on a trashy novel, first published in 1959, by a pseudonymous 'Emmanuelle Arsan' who later turned out to be a French diplomat stationed in Thailand, presumably with time on his hands. It wasn't a good film. It was atrociously dubbed. But it had high production values, exotic cultural notes, some solemn theorising about the nature of the erotic (giving it a drop of European seriousness) and winsome Sylvia Kristel – a Dutch model who wanted to break into acting – under the camera's constant caress. Emmanuelle 's endless simulated sexual encounters look astonishingly cheesy now. They are also unmistakably a male fantasy: a woman's supposed sensual awakening entirely orchestrated by the men around her. At first, she fiddles with other trophy wives, before being taken up by an elderly roué who steers her to an opium den where he invites a couple of patrons to rape her. Kristel argued against this scene, which now looks as dreadful as it sounds, but director Just Jaeckin said they had to do it because it was in the book. He said later he just wanted to make 'something soft and beautiful, with a nice story'. While Kristel would star in three sequels, he refused to make another one. Emmanuelle was not the springboard either had imagined; Kristel was never taken seriously as an actor, while Jaeckin's career as a photographer was permanently stunted by his brush with the raincoat brigade. Given this history – not to mention the convulsions in gender politics of the intervening 50 years – it was certainly a surprise when Emmanuelle was revived by French producers, this time to be directed by the impeccably feminist Audrey Diwan. It was a bold idea. Diwan won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 with The Happening, a powerful film about a young woman seeking an abortion in provincial France in the early '60s. She came to Emmanuelle, she says, from a position of relative ignorance. To this day, she has seen only 20 minutes of Jaeckin's Vaseline fantasy. 'I clearly understood this wasn't made for me as an audience, like I was not invited,' she said at last September's San Sebastian Film Festival, where her film screened on opening night. She was intrigued, however, by the idea of discussing the erotic from a woman's point of view, still more by the challenge of finding a cinematic language that would make that possible for modern audiences. 'The movie of the '70s was strong because it was about opening the frame. Whereas I want to restrain the frame. Now everyone can see everything, does it still work? That was the first thing.' She read the book, then let the character – or whatever Emmanuelle might become – sit with her. In the script she eventually wrote with Rebecca Zlotowski, Emmanuelle is no longer a trophy wife. Now played by Noemie Merlant, she has a high-flying job – literally – visiting and evaluating luxury hotels, where armies of service workers ensure that every detail of life in the bubble is perfect. Her destination is not languorous Thailand but bustling Hong Kong, where she is tasked with finding a reason to sack the Rosefield Hotel's manager Margot (Naomi Watts). On the way, in an echo of the opening scene in the first film, she has sex with a stranger in the plane's toilet. The original Emmanuelle declared herself only interested in pursuing pleasure. In Diwan's film, she grits her teeth through the act, then returns to her seat with an expression of dull disappointment. The former sex kitten is now a picture of emptiness. Merlant, who is most immediately recognisable as the feisty painter in Portrait of a Woman on Fire, says she immediately recognised herself in the new Emmanuelle. 'At the beginning of the movie, you have this woman who did not feel anything belonged to her, including her body,' she says. 'She doesn't get pleasure; she tries to make others satisfied. She is a robot. For me, it makes a lot of sense, so I said yes.' Merlant started modelling when she was 17. On her first job, she was sexually assaulted; when she told her agents what had happened, she was told it was her fault for not refusing clearly enough. This must be adult life, she decided; she would have to protect herself. Like Emmanuelle, she says, she shut down. 'For years I couldn't cry any more. It's like the only place I could cry was when I was shooting in films. And laugh. Like I could be alive only when I was shooting.' She played another role in everyday life. 'The role society gave me when I was young, the role I played for others, for men, not for myself.' What she wanted in reality, she says, eluded her. 'We have been used for men's pleasure for centuries,' she says. 'We don't even know what we want. That's what I felt. With the #MeToo movement, I realised that things were not right.' Emmanuelle's quest is to find her way back to her own desire. ''How do I get there? It takes time and then I'm going to say what I want out loud.' This was very strong for me.' Watching Emmanuelle drift to the toilet on the plane is Kei (The White Lotus ' Will Sharpe), a Japanese engineer whom she later meets in the hotel. He is as sexually numb as she is, but he is interested in her life; he questions her with gentle curiosity, peeling away her layers of icy control. Like the raddled Mario in the first Emmanuelle, he introduces her to an Asian underbelly of grubby, druggy mahjong dens, a world away from the opulent artificiality of the hotel. Unlike Mario, he is not a voyeur or a sadist. 'He is here for her, he wants her to have space,' says Merlant. 'He is a listener. And, most of the time, we are not listened to.' When her Emmanuelle does say what she wants, it is as if a wall has crumbled. Loading The new Emmanuelle was rejected by the bigger festivals, Cannes and Venice; when it finally had its premiere, some reviews were startlingly vicious. 'I think people are not happy to see a movie where Emmanuelle is sad and empty,' says Merlant. Diwan says, however, that younger generations – for whom '70s nostalgia means nothing – relate strongly to the characters' loneliness. Many say they don't want to have sex at all, which she puts down to fear: they are afraid of falling short of their online images. Maybe they are as sad as Emmanuelle; at least we can talk about it.
Telegraph
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
From The Substance to Emmanuelle: the empty promises of the ‘female gaze'
What constitutes 'feminist' filmmaking? From Coralie Fargeat's horror-satire The Substance (in which Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an over-the-hill superstar who dabbles in an experimental new treatment in order to regain her youth) to Halina Reijn's Babygirl (starring Nicole Kidman as a high-flying girlboss CEO who embarks on a passionate affair with her much younger intern) and Audrey Diwan's subversion of the sexploitation classic Emmanuelle, a new crop of films helmed by female directors are challenging audiences with primal explorations of female ageing, desire and insecurity. Yet these films have proved divisive within the female audiences they seek to empower. The Substance, which has earned Moore a Best Actress Oscar nod, has been criticised for turning an ageing female body into something worthy of terror. The way the camera objectifies Moore's co-star Margaret Qualley, who plays the 'younger, more beautiful, more perfect' version of Elisabeth, with lascivious close-ups of her poreless skin and skimpy outfits, has been accused of pandering to the 'male gaze'. Of course, this is sort of the point. It's a man that tells Elisabeth about The Substance in the first place – a detail director Coralie Fargeat didn't realise herself during writing the script, but one that makes sense as the injection turns consumers into 'the version [of yourself] that men want you to look like'. Fargeat's intentions are clear: to call out Hollywood's obsession with youth and beauty by making the audience complicit. But what exactly is achieved by replicating the means of oppression? In its grotesque finale, The Substance only punishes Elisabeth for her vanity, with hoards of onlookers laughing at her like Carrie White at her prom. There's a palpable rage at the heart of The Substance, but it's misdirected at women for taking part in vanity rituals, rather than the billion-dollar industries that push these insecurities and anxieties down our throats. Simply replicating the male gaze – a term coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' to describe how male artists have depicted women for centuries – can never dismantle it. How to tell women's stories that aren't undermined by violence against women is a recurring issue, even in critically-acclaimed films by female filmmakers. In 2021 Emerald Fennell bagged the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Promising Young Woman, in which Cassie (Carey Mulligan) takes revenge against a group of men following the rape and suicide of her best friend. While the film sees Cassie achieve her aim, it culminates in her eventual death – female empowerment always comes at the price of a woman's life. Halina Reijn's Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman, however, has no such issue. The film has an obvious 'female gaze' – a term coined in response to Mulvey's seminal essay – which is to say a camera that centres a woman's viewpoint, experience and desires authentically. In the decades since Mulvey's essay, the term 'female gaze' has gained popularity, spiking significantly around the release of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, which was praised for its abrasive, honest, unapologetic female lead. Similarly, Babygirl centres on Romy Mathis, a high-flying, self-made CEO (Kidman) who is shown to be unsatisfied with her marriage. The film opens on her faking an orgasm during sex with her husband – the reality for many women – and then secretly masturbating to BDSM pornography. When Romy embarks on an affair with her much younger intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) the spark between them is instant, and the subsequent sex is awkward, playful and electrifying. In a much-discussed scene, Dickinson dances shirtless to George Michael's 'Father Figure' – a cheeky nod to the film's age gap role reversal, but also an endearing demonstration of what so many filmmakers seem to forget: sex should be fun above all else. Reijn centres Romy's pleasure and agency – yet the director herself claims she's not depicting the female gaze, but her own. Much of Babygirl comes from Reign's experiences (the notorious scene involving a glass of milk) or those of friends (Romy never orgasming with her husband). 'We're living under a patriarchy, and these are the tools that we get to play with,' she explained in an interview with Dazed Magazine. 'I love to create women characters that are not angels.' But while Babygirl attracted plenty of buzz and box office returns, its acclaim has been substantially less than that of The Substance, with Kidman snubbed by both the Baftas and the Oscars and detractors claiming that the film wasn't 'subversive enough'. Was it because, ultimately, Kidman's character seeks pleasure through being dominated, and humiliated, by a man? At what point can we separate the female gaze from internalised misogyny? Audrey Diwan's reimagining of Emmanuelle, the 1967 erotic novel of the same name by Emmanuelle Arsan, first adapted in 1975 and becoming one of the most influential erotic films of all time, has also been accused of not going far enough. The promise of a reimagining by Diwan – who won the Venice Film Festival's top honour in 2021 for her blistering adaptation of Annie Ernaux's memoir Happening – was exciting, but the finished film is chilly and uninspired, with more shots of Hong Kong's glittering skyscrapers than incisive sexual commentary. It's clear that Emmanuelle (played by Noémie Merlant) enjoys sex, but all the intimate scenes within the film feel devoid of passion and intimacy. When Emmanuelle develops an infatuation with another hotel guest, it should spark a game of erotic cat and mouse; instead it feels listless and stilted. It's clear that having female filmmakers behind the camera does not inherently make a film interesting or empowering for women. So what do we mean when we talk about 'feminist filmmaking' or 'female empowerment' in cinema? Trailblazing female filmmaker Agnès Varda argued that the very act of picking up a camera is a small revolution for a woman. 'The first feminist gesture is to say: 'Okay, they're looking at me. But I'm looking at them.' The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them,' said Agnès Varda in an interview for Marie Mandy's 2000 documentary Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women's Cinema. Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave, directed Cléo from 5 to 7 in 1961, in which a young singer waits for the results of a biopsy which will reveal if she has cancer. The film is entirely told from Cléo's point of view, centering her perspective as she reckons with her own mortality. Similarly, One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1977) focuses on two young women who fall in and out of touch over the course of 14 years, grappling with the subject of abortion at a time when it was illegal in France. The film was criticised by French feminists for being 'being too nuanced, not anti‐men enough', but is widely accepted now as a landmark feature. Concurrently, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman – whose 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound's decennial industry survey – pioneered a unique style of storytelling that centered women's stories through intimate depictions of domesticity. Within the three-hour Jeanne Dielman, much of the film is spent in the protagonist's kitchen, watching as she cooks and cleans. Here Akerman sought to challenge the 'hierarchy of images' within cinema that devalues domestic labour, yet she contested labels such as 'female filmmaker' being attributed to her, noting 'when people say there is a feminist film language, it is like saying there is only one way for women to express themselves'. Across the Atlantic, Cheryl Dunye's 1996 romantic comedy The Watermelon Woman centers a young black lesbian (played by Dunye) as she attempts to create a film about little-known 1930s actress Fae Richards (an amalgam of Black actresses forgotten throughout film history.) But perhaps the most remarkable recent reflection on the female gaze comes in Céline Sciamma's 2019 romantic drama, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, starring Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel as Marianne, a painter, and Héloïse, an aristocrat, who have a brief but passionate affair in 18th century France. Héloïse asks Marianne, while sitting for her portrait, 'If you look at me, who do I look at?'
