Elle
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Talent: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling
Release Date: 17th March
You’d never expect a rape revenge thriller by Paul Verhoeven, the director of Basic Instinct, to be a tasteful, restrained affair, and Elle certainly isn’t one.
Opening with protagonist Michèle Leblanc (Huppert), a successful businesswoman, being sexually assaulted by a masked man in her kitchen, this film goes to some very dark places indeed. Once her attacker is gone, Michèle sweeps the glass off the floor, bins her clothes, takes a bath, and orders Chinese takeaway. She does not report the rape to the police, and only mentions it to her friends in such an offhand manner that at first they think she is making some kind of sick joke.
Played by the fearless, magnetic, utterly accomplished Isabelle Huppert, Michèle is a character for the ages, self-determined, sharp-tongued and completely unapologetic, and through her increasingly reckless actions, which Verhoeven neither condemns nor condones, the film becomes a profoundly challenging exploration of consent, female empowerment, misogyny, voyeurism and role-playing.
Disturbing, thought-provoking, and funnier than it has any right to be, this is quite simply a masterpiece.
Words – Felipe Deakin
