Emilia (2005)

A modern retelling of a classic play by Gotthold Lessing, director Henrik Pfeifer’s Emilia (2005) accomplishes a disjunction between new and old by making his twenty-first-century characters speak the original lines of eighteenth-century dialogue. A scathing attack on nobility, the plot follows a virtuous, affluent woman whose beauty leads to her downfall. A nobleman’s lust causes the woman to be disgraced, thereby driving her to have her father murdered to maintain what little dignity she has left. Ivonne Schönherr inhabits the role of the heroine Emilia and does a convincing job of portraying the ravishing fallen woman by rolling artfully around in the nude.