On Paul Verhoeven's Deviously Twisted Elle

 

This review originally appeared in Bob Ham's Portland film screenings newsletter Daily Projections in December 23, 2016.

ELLE

(Paul Verhoeven, 2016, France, rated R, 130 minutes)

Philippe Djian, the French-Algerian author behind the novel that inspired Paul Verhoeven's deviously twisted Elle, also wrote 1985's Betty Blue. 

In Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1986 film, Béatrice Dalle's unstable 19-year-old segues from one increasingly unfortunate scenario to another. She just can't get her shit together. 

By contrast, Isabelle Huppert's Michèle always seems to be in control, except the stability of that façade provides the open question that powers Verhoeven's psycho-sexual thriller, Elle (Freeway Killer writer David Birke adapted the script from Djian's 2012 novel, "Oh…"). 

Dutch-born Verhoeven, who returned to European filmmaking with 2006's WWII psycho-sexual actioner Black Book, wastes no time on establishing details, and plunges straight into the middle of the muck. Before revealing any details about his protagonist, other than that she lives in a well-appointed manor, he depicts her brutal rape by a masked assailant. 

While Michèle's beautiful grey cat watches impassively (an inspired touch), she tries to fight back, but the masked marauder overpowers her, does the deed, and disappears in a flash. After pulling herself together, Michèle doesn't call the police, her best friend (Anne Consigny), or even her ex-husband (Charles Berling). Other than a trip to the hospital for an STD screening, she returns to her routine as if nothing had happened.

 

 

Despite her veneer of control, Verhoeven makes it clear that Michèle might know the rapist, which means that he could strike again, even after she changes the locks. The possibilities include two of the employees at the video game company she oversees--one can't stand her and the other worships her--the awkward neighbor (Laurent Lafitte) with the deeply devout wife, or maybe even someone with a connection to her son's pregnant girlfriend (Alice Isaaz), a bad-tempered manipulator who has the weak-willed Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) wrapped around her finger. 

These characters would be more than enough to keep the narrative machinery humming, but then Verhoeven throws a spanner into the works: Michèle isn't merely a victim of a violent act. As a child, she witnessed a horrific crime--and it's possible that she even participated in it. 

Once Verhoeven peels back that layer, he suggests that the risks she takes, involving the men in her life, may not simply serve as an attempt to catch the rapist, but that she's having a sick kind of fun. Maybe she feels like she deserved to be attacked; maybe she plans to torture the attacker. 

 

 

 

One way or the other, Michèle provides an ideal role for the incomparable actress, a sister of a kind to the unpredictable instructor she played in Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, because there isn't another who could play this character with the same degree of intense ambiguity. 

As for Verhoeven, Elle marks the culmination of his lifelong sex + power project, but with a subtlety and sophistication that contrasts with the blunt-force provocations of his American erotic thrillers, particularly Showgirls, in which Elizabeth Berkeley's dancer was mostly good, or Basic Instinct, in which Sharon Stone's novelist was all bad. Michèle is neither and both. 

 

With the passing of Claude Chabrol, who directed Huppert in a series of psycho-sexual thrillers in the 1990s, like La Cérémonie and Merci pour le Chocolat, Verhoeven is the master of this domain. Long may he reign.

 

Elle is available on Blu-ray and DVD through Sony Pictures Classics and to stream through a variety of pay operators. Images from the IMDb, The Independent, and Senses of Cinema.