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Asri-unix.226 net.movies utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure Tue Dec 15 15:05:05 1981 Goodbye, Emmanuelle n010 0709 06 Dec 81 BC-MOVIE-REVIEW ''Goodbye, Emmanuelle'' By JOHN CORRY c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK - The folks in ''Goodbye, Emmanuelle'' have sex not just in twos, but in threes and fours. It is wearisome after a while, for them and for us, but we have the advantage - we can look at the Seychelles, where the movie was filmed, while they, poor things, can only look at one another. The background of ''Goodbye, Emmanuelle'' is made up of lush, lazy pictures of the islands in the Indian Ocean; the foreground is made up of bodies, some of them positively acrobatic. The scenery wins every time. Consider, for example, a scene in which Emmanuelle, the adorable, but here somewhat wooden, Sylvia Kristel, couples in the surf with her new lover. They are really quite good at it, briny but balletic. (Did we really once think that Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster had the last word on that in ''From Here to Eternity?'') The curious thing is that it's the surf that gets to you. The sex is OK, but once is enough really, and in the movie they go at it for ever so long. The surf, meanwhile, sparkles. ''Goodbye, Emmanuelle,'' the fourth in the ''Emmanuelle'' series with Miss Kristel as the star, is about some rich white trash, living in teak houses, decorated with Bloomingdale's best rattans and fabrics. They are unhappy, however, even if they pretend they're not. ''Making love is my main interest in life,'' Emmanuelle says to the new lover. ''Doesn't it get a bit monotonous?'' he asks. In fact, he is even a little bit shocked. So, Emmanuelle thinks it over. Does she really want to stay with her architect-husband? Money and decadence are fun for a time - the husband gets his jollies from threesomes - but what about love, the monogamous kind? The lover, a film director, returns to Paris. Emmanuelle, chucking the kinkiness, decides to follow. So, goodbye, Emmanuelle. The question in the movie is whether Francois Leterrier, its director, was so absorbed in the lovemaking that he just allowed the scenery to creep in, or whether he put it in on purpose. Maybe it doesn't matter. There is also a very nice scene in a Seychelles nightclub. Everyone shakes pleasingly to down-home music. It is a mixture of reggae and Cajun, and you will wish it lasted longer.

nyt-12-06-81 1009est ********** -------

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