Latest news with #Kristel
GMA Network
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- GMA Network
Kristel Fulgar, husband Suhyuk Ha are romantic lovers in Paris in latest snaps
Kristel Fulgar and her South Korean husband, Suhyuk Ha are so in love at the City of Love! On Instagram, Kristel shared some snaps from their romantic photoshoot taken by Nice Print in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. "Paris hits different this time," Kristel wrote. Before their trip to Paris, the newlyweds went to Venice, Italy first as part of their honeymoon. Kristel and Suhyuk got married in a church wedding in South Korea last week. The couple announced their engagement in February. Suhyuk visited her in the Philippines for the first time last March. According to a November 2024 vlog, she and Suhyuk became officially in a relationship after he converted to her religion, Iglesia ni Cristo. Kristel said that his conversion took almost 11 months. —Jade Veronique Yap/MGP, GMA Integrated News
GMA Network
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- GMA Network
Kristel Fulgar, husband Suhyuk Ha go to Italy for honeymoon
Kristel Fulgar and her South Korean husband Suhyuk Ha jetted off to Italy for their honeymoon! On Instagram, the Filipina actress and content creator shared some snaps from their trip in Venice. As seen in the photos, the newlyweds enjoyed a gondola ride in the Grand Canal, and enjoyed some gelato and salad. 'Ten years ago, I promised myself I'd only return to this romantic place with my future husband. And now, I'm back, Venezia,' Kristel wrote. Kristel and Suhyuk got married in a church wedding in South Korea last week. The couple announced their engagement in February. Suhyuk visited her in the Philippines for the first time last March. According to a November 2024 vlog, she and Suhyuk became officially in a relationship after he converted to her religion, Iglesia ni Cristo. Kristel said his conversion took almost 11 months. — Jade Veronique Yap/LA, GMA Integrated News
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.
Web Release
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Web Release
InterContinental Maldives Unveils an Evocative New Artwork 'The Silent Dance' by Kristel Bechara
Web Release Selection Lifestyle By Editor_wr Last updated Apr 28, 2025 Art and culture have intertwined in breathtaking fashion once again at InterContinental Maldives Maamunagau Resort with the unveiling of 'The Silent Dance', an evocative new painting created during the exclusive Eid artist residency of award-winning Middle Eastern artist Kristel Bechara. Drawing on the island's conservation work and natural beauty, the painting captures the harmony of marine life through the graceful form of manta rays, positioning the resort as a beacon for meaningful cultural collaboration and artistic expression in the Maldives. Kristel Bechara, known for her signature fusion of vivid patterns and expressive colours against monochromatic backdrops, recently brought her unique aesthetic to the resort during a six-day residency from April 5th to 10th. Beginning the work in her Dubai studio, Kristel completed the final brushstrokes of 'The Silent Dance' while immersed in the island's serene surroundings. Guests had the opportunity to engage with the artist through live sessions and interactive workshops, gaining first-hand insight into her creative process and the environmental message behind the artwork. 'The Silent Dance' is a captivating homage to the fluid beauty of manta rays, creatures that glide through the ocean in silence and symmetry. At the heart of the canvas, three manta rays float in a circular motion above a greyscale coral reef, their wings adorned with intricate, vibrant detailing. The composition mirrors Henri Matisse's famed 'The Dance', replacing human figures with marine life in a rhythmic celebration of movement, freedom, and continuity. This reinterpretation not only showcases Kristel's rich visual language but also speaks to the quiet, powerful interconnectedness of life beneath the waves. By contrasting the colourful mantas with the starkness of a monochrome reef, the piece brings attention to the fragility of marine ecosystems. It reflects the delicate balance between nature's vibrancy and the environmental challenges facing the oceans today. Through 'The Silent Dance', viewers are invited into a meditative moment, a celebration of the underwater world and a call to action to protect it. The unveiling of 'The Silent Dance' further cements InterContinental Maldives Maamunagau Resort as a hub for immersive, artistic encounters that transcend borders. The successful Eid residency with Kristel Bechara not only strengthened cultural ties between the Maldives and the UAE but also created a platform where art becomes a medium for storytelling, sustainability, and shared experience. Beyond its growing role in the cultural landscape, the resort continues to lead in sustainable luxury. Nestled on the edge of the Baa Atoll UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the property is committed to preserving the natural world it calls home. Through its long-standing partnership with The Manta Trust, the resort supports essential research into manta behaviour and habitat, using its proximity to a juvenile manta feeding ground to offer guests rare educational encounters with these majestic creatures. InterContinental Maldives Maamunagau Resort's collaboration with Kristel Bechara is a powerful reminder of the beauty and fragility of our oceans. As the resort continues to host artists, thinkers, and environmental advocates, it reaffirms its vision as a destination where conservation meets creativity and where every guest leaves inspired by both the land and the sea. Comments are closed.
