[2] An X-rated film, it has a cast of mainstream actors including Victor Spinetti, Sarah Brackett, Constantin de Goguel, Ina Skriver, Jeremy Child, Jack Haig, and Richard Oldfield.

The film, set in 1928, follows Emily as she returns home from a finishing school in Switzerland to her mother's country house in the English countryside, where she meets several characters who would like to seduce her, and follows her induction into sensual pleasures.

[3] Richard Walker, her mother's lover, is a middle-aged man-about-town who quietly sets his sights on Emily, while a young American writer and schoolteacher named James Wise tries to impress her by sensual acrobatics in his flying machine.

Neame later wrote that this was "a country house of faded grandeur, but it suited the narrative well with its plush reds and rich greens, all set in a golden landscape".

[4] Emily was a moderate success at the box office in the 1970s, but in the early 1980s it had a revival and did far better, gaining publicity due to a romance between Koo Stark and Prince Andrew.

Alan Brien wrote in The Observer that Neame and Herbert should have been less tame with a scene in the drawing room, as censorship had been relaxed and the sexuality could have been more explicit.

A first-time effort for producer Christopher Neame (son of Ronald), this Brent Walker release is a classier than normal British-made entry with highly effective camera work by Jack Hildyard.

"[13] In their book Great Houses of England & Wales (1994), Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and Christopher Simon Sykes later wrote: "The present Lord Pembroke is (as Henry Herbert) a film and television director, best known for the Civil War drama series By the Sword Divided and for Emily, starring Miss Koo Stark.