RIP Sylvia Kristel

 

Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, best known to the world as the sensual, globe-trotting heroine of the Emmanuelle films, died in Amsterdam on October 17 at the age of 60. After beginning her career as a model in the Netherlands, Kristel got her big break as the title character of the French erotic sensation Emmanuelle, which spawned numerous sequels and even more imitators. Kristel reprised her role in four subsequent Emmanuelle features, as well as continuing on to play the character in a series of made-for-French-television movies in the early 1990s. She re-teamed with the director of the original Emmanuelle, Just Jaeckin, in a saucy, English-language adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1981 before starring in a pair of American sex comedies (Private Lessons and Private School, no relation). Kristel's other notable films include Walerian Borowczyk's La marge opposite Joe Dallesandro; Roger Vadim's second, "unofficial" adaptation of Les liaisons dangereuses, Une femme fidèle; Claude Chabrol's loose adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, Alice ou la dernière fugue; Alain Robbe-Grillet's surreal mystery Le jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire); the American espionage spoof, The Nude Bomb; Curtis Harrington's trashy Mata Hari film; and Fons Rademakers' dark thriller Because of the Cats.