Hello! I gave this film a 10, not because it stands up to Citizen Kane, The Godfather or Mulholland Drive, but because for this genre (soft core porn/erotica) it's the best. Emmanuelle 2 (1975) is just about as good. The rest in the series have their merits and faults, but for the most part get steadily worse. But I am not just comparing Emmanuelle and Emmanuelle 2 to the other Emmanuelle films -- I am comparing them to all the films in this genre/subgenre -- all those films that you saw on Cinemax After Dark.
Also, I would like to point out that Sylvia Kristel (b. September 28, 1952, Utrecht, Netherlands) is the best that you can do in this type of film. It's embarrassing to see her in (barely) legit films like The Nude Bomb (1980), The Fifth Musketeer (1979) or The Concorde: Airport '79 (1979). She seems so ill at ease. But in her best work -- Emmanuelle, Emmanuelle 2, Borowczyk's La Marge (1976); moments from: some of the other Emmanuelle pictures, Curtis Harrington's Mata Hari (1985), Jaeckin's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), and Vadim's Game of Seduction (1976) -- she's as mesmerizing as Garbo was in Camille (1937), Anna Karenina (1935) and... Mata Hari (1931).