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Desired and despised: The life of Sylvia Kristel
50 years after the first Emmanuelle movie (1974), French director Audrey Diwan launches the international remake with Naomi Watts, Will Sharpe and Noémie Merland. The plot is the woman explores sexual pleasure. OF COURSE, THERE IS ONLY ONE SYLVIA KRISTEL. Who possessed such childlike innocence and beauty that her sexuality was almost perverse.
In the award winning biography ‘Desired and Despised’, Suzanne Rethans describes the life of the biggest film star the Netherlands has ever known. Sylvia Kristel became world-famous overnight because of Emmanuelle. One day she was in boarding school with the nuns, the next she couldn’t cross the Champs-Elysées because fans were blocking the street screaming ‘Emmanuelle!’ Within a few months Emmanuelle conquered the whole world, being the first erotic movie in normal cinema.
Kristel had a rich love life and had relationships with, among others, Belgian writer Hugo Claus, the father of her son, Roger Vadim, Ian McShane, Gérard Depardieu and Jean Louis Trintignant. She also struggled with addiction. Emmanuelle made her rich, but she lost those millions of dollars because of poor decision making (she said no to ‘King Kong’) and a bad taste in men. She also lost the care of her son. ‘Desired and Despised’ is a portrait of a life full of fame, intense loneliness and wonderful stories in between. KRISTEL SHOWS PERSEVERANCE, COURAGE AND WIT, AND ALWAYS FINDS A WAY TO BOUNCE BACK.
Kristel was a controversy from the start. She was embraced as an icon of sexual liberation in one country, and reviled by the women's movement in another. She used her beauty and sexuality in a submissive way in an era of time that the atmosphere was severely anti-male and anti-pornography. She still embodies that controversy today. The #MeToo movement exposed how the film industry has taken adventage of actresses for decades. Sylvia Kristel also had sex with directors, producers and actors if she thought they could lift her career. But she chose them herself. She would never regard herself as a victim, she was a predator. Which, of course, is controversial in itself.
She had a loveless childhood. After her father divorced her mother and Kristel saw what shabby conditions her mother was in, she never. Her drive was to become rich and famous. And she succeeded. But she struggled with alcohol and drug addictions, which prevented her from caring for her son, thus completing the cycle of neglect and abuse.
Her story gives us insights in the ‘roaring’ seventies of Paris, starring Serge and Jane Gainsbourgh, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling and Karl Lagerfeld. In Los Angeles she has frightful encounters with Alain Delon, and reaches her lowest point on the set of Private Lessons after her son is taken away. Her second husband leaves her with a million-dollar debt that will keep her on welfare for the rest of her life. But she accepts life as it comes and does so with such wit and courage that you have to love her.
At the end of her career, she plays her best role in ‘Lijmen/het Been’. Jeanne, a pub landlady who is decidedly critical of male immorality. Her self-assurance is reinforced by the sexual power that shines through thanks to the Emmanuelle films and Lady Chatterley's Lover. These are characters burnt into memory and the collective mind. The roles are reversed. It is not she who is being watched. She is seeing. It is the gaze of a woman who has seen it all before.
In the award winning biography ‘Desired and Despised’, Suzanne Rethans describes the life of the biggest film star the Netherlands has ever known. Sylvia Kristel became world-famous overnight because of Emmanuelle. One day she was in boarding school with the nuns, the next she couldn’t cross the Champs-Elysées because fans were blocking the street screaming ‘Emmanuelle!’ Within a few months Emmanuelle conquered the whole world, being the first erotic movie in normal cinema.
Kristel had a rich love life and had relationships with, among others, Belgian writer Hugo Claus, the father of her son, Roger Vadim, Ian McShane, Gérard Depardieu and Jean Louis Trintignant. She also struggled with addiction. Emmanuelle made her rich, but she lost those millions of dollars because of poor decision making (she said no to ‘King Kong’) and a bad taste in men. She also lost the care of her son. ‘Desired and Despised’ is a portrait of a life full of fame, intense loneliness and wonderful stories in between. KRISTEL SHOWS PERSEVERANCE, COURAGE AND WIT, AND ALWAYS FINDS A WAY TO BOUNCE BACK.
Kristel was a controversy from the start. She was embraced as an icon of sexual liberation in one country, and reviled by the women's movement in another. She used her beauty and sexuality in a submissive way in an era of time that the atmosphere was severely anti-male and anti-pornography. She still embodies that controversy today. The #MeToo movement exposed how the film industry has taken adventage of actresses for decades. Sylvia Kristel also had sex with directors, producers and actors if she thought they could lift her career. But she chose them herself. She would never regard herself as a victim, she was a predator. Which, of course, is controversial in itself.
She had a loveless childhood. After her father divorced her mother and Kristel saw what shabby conditions her mother was in, she never. Her drive was to become rich and famous. And she succeeded. But she struggled with alcohol and drug addictions, which prevented her from caring for her son, thus completing the cycle of neglect and abuse.
Her story gives us insights in the ‘roaring’ seventies of Paris, starring Serge and Jane Gainsbourgh, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling and Karl Lagerfeld. In Los Angeles she has frightful encounters with Alain Delon, and reaches her lowest point on the set of Private Lessons after her son is taken away. Her second husband leaves her with a million-dollar debt that will keep her on welfare for the rest of her life. But she accepts life as it comes and does so with such wit and courage that you have to love her.
At the end of her career, she plays her best role in ‘Lijmen/het Been’. Jeanne, a pub landlady who is decidedly critical of male immorality. Her self-assurance is reinforced by the sexual power that shines through thanks to the Emmanuelle films and Lady Chatterley's Lover. These are characters burnt into memory and the collective mind. The roles are reversed. It is not she who is being watched. She is seeing. It is the gaze of a woman who has seen it all before.
302 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 28, 2024
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October 18, 2025
An interesting rags to riches to rags tale, but really needs a better translation.
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