mmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel) flies to Bangkok to meet her husband Jean (Daniel Sarky), a diplomat, who asks her if she had any other lovers while she was in Paris; she replies that she has not. After taking a nude swim, Emmanuelle is approached by a pretty young girl named Marie-Ange (Christine Boisson), who asks to meet Emmanuelle at her house. Marie-Ange arrives at the house and finds Emmanuelle sleeping, and takes advantage of the situation to feel her body. Emmanuelle wakes up and they go outside where Marie-Ange asks Emmanuelle if she has any photos of herself and Jean having sex, after Emmanuelle replies she does not, Marie-Ange takes a French magazine with a photo of actor Paul Newman and begins to masturbate in front of Emmanuelle. Emmanuelle confesses to Marie-Ange that while she did not cheat on her husband in Paris, she did have sex with two strangers on the flight over to Bangkok. Emmanuelle begins to masturbate as she recounts the tryst. At night, Emmanuelle tells Jean about Marie-Ange's younger girl's lack of shame, which leads to Jean encourages her to pursue the friendship.

The next day at a party, Marie-Ange introduces Emmanuelle to one of her lovers, an older man named Mario (Alain Cuny). Emmanuelle sees a French archaeologist named Bee (Marika Green) who is outside of most of the expatriate circles and strikes up a private conversation with Bee telling her to meet her at the khlongs. Emmanuelle meets with Bee at the location but Bee is uninterested in Emmanuelle. Undeterred, Emmanuelle gets on Bee's jeep as she is about to leave for the dig site. Meanwhile Jean is angry that Emmanuelle has left without informing him and suspects that her Squash partner Ariane (Jeanne Colletin) is behind it. On asking her, Ariane tells him that all she has to offer is consolation sex. Emmanuelle and Bee arrive at the dig site where Emmanuelle distracts Bee from her work. The two have sex, but afterwards Bee asks Emmanuelle to leave. Emmanuelle returns home in tears, feeling humiliated. Jean tries to comfort her and suggests she takes another lover.

The next day Emmanuelle and Ariane attempt to play squash but have an argument. Ariane is jealous that Emmanuelle ran off with Bee, as she had hoped to be Emmanuelle's first female lover, while Emmanuelle is displeased at Ariane for having sex with Jean. Their argument leads to Emmanuelle to meet with Mario, stating that at his age, making love becomes so difficult that any man capable of it must be an artist. After consulting with Jean, Emmanuelle resigns herself to a meeting with Mario for dinner. Mario tells Emmanuelle that monogamy will soon die out and that she must learn to let lust, rather than guilt or reason, guide her when it comes to sex, which will lead her to greater levels of pleasure. To instill this lesson, Mario takes her to an opium den, where she is raped by one of the denizens while he watches. Mario then takes Emmanuelle to a boxing ring, where he talks two young men into fighting each other for the right to have sex with her. Mario tells Emmanuelle to choose one of the men as her favorite. After the match, her chosen champion prevails, and she is so aroused by his willingness to fight for her that she licks the blood from a wound on his forehead and then allows him to have sex with her.

Later, Emmanuelle is awakened by Mario, who tells her to change into a dress with a zipper down the back, allowing Mario to strip her instantly for her next sexual encounter. Emmanuelle protests that she is tired and asks Mario if he himself will ever have sex with her. Mario replies that he is waiting for the "next Emmanuelle". The film ends with Emmanuelle sitting at a mirror and applying makeup, hoping that by following Mario's instructions, she will reach the higher levels of pleasure that he has promised.

Emmanuelle was released in France on June 26, 1974.[9] The film sold 8.89 million tickets in France.[10]

In the United Kingdom, Emmanuelle was the first adult film to play in regular British theaters after receiving extensive BBFC cuts to most of the sex scenes. For its initial video release in 1990 the scene in the bar where a woman smokes a cigarette from her vagina and the scene where the character Mario encourages the rape of Emmanuelle were cut. These edits were eventually waived for the 2007 Optimum DVD release.[11]

Emmanuelle was distributed in the United States by Columbia Pictures and was their first X rated film.[6] Columbia agreed to distribute the film after learning that the audience seen in line for Emmanuelle was mostly women.[8] The advertising for the film took a highbrow approach to marketing the film opposed to focusing on its exploitative nature.[6] Columbia's president David Begelman and former Young & Rubicam president Steve Frankfurt developed the tagline for the film "X was never like this."[8] This tagline was developed to give the audience an ambiguous reaction suggesting that the film was either more graphic than other X-rated films or more sophisticated and artistic.[8] Jay Cocks described its promotion in Time, stating "No exclusive linage in the sex sheets, no adhesive stickers for the walls of public toilets. Emmanuelle is being hyped as a classier breed of porn."[12] The film earned enough money for Columbia to help them recoup from their losses after the box office failure of Lost Horizon in 1973.[6]

The film received generally negative reviews from American critics on its initial release.[6] Variety described the Jaeckin's direction as "a bit pompous" and that outside Alain Cuny that the "acting is a bit-self-conscious".[13] Roger Ebert was one of the few American critics who gave the film a positive review.[6] Ebert stated that "in terms of its genre (soft-core skin flick) it's very well done: lushly photographed on location in Thailand, filled with attractive and intriguing people, and scored with brittle, teasing music. Now that hard-core porno has become passe, it's a relief to see a movie that drops the gynecology and returns to a certain amount of sexy sophistication."[14]

Later reviews had mixed opinions. PopMatters gave the film a seven out of ten rating, describing it as holding "up as not just an erotic classic, but a cinematic classic, period."[15] The AV Club gave the film a C rating, stating that "it remains easy to get seduced by the film's slightly druggy, brainless sexiness" but that the film's subtext has not aged well, noting that the "film makes a lot of noise about sexual freedom, the climactic scene, in which the locals gang-rape Kristel while Cuny's silver-haired lech looks on, the question arises of just whose fantasy this is, and who's supposed to be freed by it."[16] TV Guide gave the film two and a half stars out of four, finding that the film took itself too seriously but that it was still a "relatively well-made picture".[17] Empire gave the film three stars out of five, noting that "Sylvia Kristel gives the essential take on the character, adding a sweetness and innocence, actually giving the traces of a performance" between the sex scenes.[18] Total Film awarded the film three stars out of five, finding its " theme of sensual discovery chimed with the feisty zeitgeist" and "The rest of the film is daft, camp, over-oiled and dubbed to death, and yet... it's still a thrill."[19]