User Reviews

Director Paul Verhoeven is famous for his provocative films, often combining sex, violence and psychological power play. Actress Isabelle Huppert is famous for her demanding roles, often playing powerful women with an obsession for sex and/or violence.

Put the two together and you can guess what you get. Elle's lead character, Michèle, is a woman who owns a video game company, specializing in games filled with extreme sex and violence. She casually shares her bed with her best friend's husband. She masturbates watching the neighbour unloading the trunk of his car. Her father is a convicted serial killer. Oh, and she doesn't seem to mind getting raped.

At least, that's the impression after the very first scene. After having been attacked and violently raped, she doesn't call the police of even a friend, but a fast food restaurant, ordering something to eat.

The film explores not only Michèle's relationship with her rapist, whose identity is established after about two thirds of the film, but also the men and women in her immediate circle. They all have their problems and peculiarities, and Michèle seems to pull all their strings as a hard, cold woman, superbly mastering her feelings and emotions.

For the viewer, it takes some effort to understand all the different relationships, and even more to grasp Michèle's behaviour. The only explanation Verhoeven offers, is her troubled youth as the daughter of a serial killer. In my opinion, the film suffers from an overload of characters with psychological difficulties. There's a mother hiring a gigolo because she can't accept getting older, there's a son clinging to a dominating girlfriend, a neighbour with a wife obsessed with religion, an employee playing a dirty trick on Michèle, and so on. Personally, I found it a bit too much.

The one thing that stands out in this film, is Isabelle Huppert's acting. Any other actress could easily have made Michèle's character unbelievable. But Huppert's utter detachment from any form of sensitivity makes the part completely convincing.

Elle has been making the rounds at film festivals since its premiere at Cannes this past year, with much acclaim and, in typical Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) fashion, some controversy surrounding its content. It tells the story of Michele Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert), a successful business woman, who is raped by an unknown ski-masked assailant. Unfortunately, in today's world, this isn't something that's entirely shocking itself, but it's the way Verhoeven's Michele reacts to the rape that will unsettle viewers.

The film opens with a struggle that isn't seen. The noises that are being made, however, are unmistakable. When we catch a glimpse of the sight, we see Michele on the ground with her assailant dressed in black standing above her, he quickly leaves, Michele still lying on the ground stunned for a moment before getting up and doing everything a rape victim shouldn't do. First, she cleans up the crime scene and then gets into the bathtub with a glass of wine with an odd look that I couldn't discern the moment that I was viewing it, but as the movie went along, I figured it out.

Her look was that of pleasure.

Yes. This film goes there.

Michele doesn't tell her son when he asks about a bruise on her face. "Fell off my bike," she says as she continues about her evening as if nothing happened. It isn't until later, at dinner that she tells a group of people, including her ex-husband, that she 'supposes' she was raped.

Her odd behavior is given a backstory. Her father, Charles Leblanc, was a serial killer who killed a number of people in their town and it's even suggested that ten year old Michele may've participated in this horrific act.

As the film continues, a thread of dark comedy surfaces; Michele goes to the doctor to get an STD panel. "Are you concerned about a recent exposure? I can give you some PEP?"

"Nah. I'll just roll the dice."

She looks at a co-worker's outfit, similar to that of her assailant. She gives her co-worker that same look she had in the bathtub. "I like your outfit."

It's safe to say, this isn't a typical film about rape, and those who are sensitive to this topic probably should avoid it. It's slated to have an awards friendly November release date, most likely for Isabelle Huppert's fantastic performance, but I'm not sure how awards bodies are going to take to this. A French movie about rape from the point-of- view of a woman who enjoys it? How on earth does someone sell that?

Very interesting and grotesque character-study drama.

Very intriguing main character and an amazing portrayal by Isabelle Huppert, truly a great performance. A very damaged character displayed in a really realistic sort of way, in terms of the effects it has had on her and the way she deals with situations in her life.

A lot of wild scenes and this movie ain't scared of "going there" to get its point across.

Character dynamics are...interesting to say the least but they make a lot of brave choices that ends up fitting the movie well.

Movie looks great, scenes flow well together and acting is great across the board.

Perhaps I wish they would have spend a little movie time on individual story lines / character relations, as they introduce so many different plots and characters with different sort of relationships and not all of them has satisfying developments.

This also mean that the movie can be a tiny bit repetitive as the movie is quite long and there are a lot of similar scenes with similar purposes that tells us things we already know about certain characters. However, this isn't exactly a big problem as most of the scenes are really good and very entertaining in some way or form.

Movie has a very dark and dry sense of humor but it has it's purpose and the movie is actually really funny, if you can get its perspective.

Overall, while not a personal favorite, its a very good and interesting movie, for sure.

• 7.5/10.

The wealthy entrepreneur Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) is the owner of a video game company that she runs with her best friend Anna (Anne Consigny). She is divorced from Richard Leblanc (Charles Berling) and has a love affair with Anna's husband Robert (Christian Berkel). Her son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) lives with his girlfriend Josie (Alice Isaaz) that is pregnant. Her mother Irène Leblanc (Judith Magre) tries to convince Michèle to visit her father that is in prison for a life sentence after killing twenty-seven neighbors in an outbreak. One day, Michèle is raped by a stranger wearing ski mask. She buys pepper spray and an ax for self-protection while she seeks out the attacker. She also befriends her next door neighbors Patrick (Laurent Lafitte) and Rebecca (Virginie Efira) and invites them to a Christmas party at her home. When the stranger breaks in her house again, Michèle subdues him and has a surprise. Who might be the rapist?

"Elle" is a weird and bizarre film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Despite the great performance of Isabelle Huppert, the story is pointless and the movie is overrated in IMDb. Michèle Leblanc is a tough, ruthless, cruel and disloyal woman that betrays her best friend having a love affair with her husband. But the annoying plot goes nowhere and is totally disappointing. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): No Available

ELLE was viewed at the recent 2016 Cannes Film Festival. It's been a while since we have seen the work of Dutchman Paul Verhoeven, now 77, the author of Basic Instinct and Total Recall. His last film, Black Book (Zwarte Boek 2006) was a return home to The Netherlands after a 20 year hiatus in Hollywood. Zwarte Boek, a WWII Jewish resistance thriller starring Carice van Houten was recognized in Holland not only as a glorious homecoming for Verhoeven but was also voted The Best Dutch Film of ALL Time in a poll of the Dutch public taken in 2008.

The psychological thriller ELLE is Verhoeven's first film in French and stars the best French actress in captivity by a country mile, Isabelle Huppert, now a hard-to-believe age 63. In this one she plays a still very sexually desirable middle aged redhead, Michèle Leblanc, the hard-as-nails boss of a Major Video Games enterprise, a fiercely independent single women who plays the field and gets violently raped in the very first scene of the film by a fully masked intruder in black body rubber who breaks into her well appointed apartment and leaves her battered, panting, and nearly senseless on the floor, after getting his rocks off (and hers as well!) ... This event is witnessed only by Michele's unperturbed pet cat, an important side player in this study of extreme perversion á deux.

The theme of sexual assault by an unknown assailant is also at the center of another Cannes competition film, the Iranian entry "Forushande" (The Salesman) but Verhoeven's treatment is infinitely more profound and far more gripping. No comparison -- different league altogether cinematically speaking.

As for Isabelle Huppert this woman is in a class by herself as an actress -- something like Bette Davis way back in the Good Old golden Hollywood Days. Too bad Davis isn't around today to see Isabelle Huppert carrying on with the same kind of fearless screen magic ~ Both actresses willing to accept distasteful roles no other actress would dare to for fear of "damaging their image" -- and turning such roles into singular transcendent instances of screen interpretation. One thinks of Davis in "Whatever happened to Baby Jane" or Huppert in half a dozen other roles in which she somehow turned female psychotics into appealing figures; A woman who slowly poisons her husband in Chabrol's "Merci pour le chocolat", "La Cérémonie" in which Huppert, a very whacky post office employee incites a shy illiterate maid to murder the entire family she works for ... or "Ma Mère" in which Huppert plays a polymorphous bi-sexual nymphomaniac who eventually seduces her own timorous son in a closing incestual death embrace -- All roles no other actress would touch with a ten foot pole or be able to interpret with such verve that audiences are awed and fascinated -- and ultimately entertained.

Working with basically instinctual director Verhoeven Huppert has practically outdone herself if such is possible. The character that she brings to life in this film adaptation of a currently best selling novel ("Oh" by Philippe Djian) is an upper class business woman who, for whatever reasons of her own, gets her sexual jollies by being violently battered and raped -- in this case by the masked sadist who lives next door, a seemingly mild mannered gentleman in everyday life, married to a sincere deeply religious young woman. At the same time she needs to get revenge on the rapist for feeding her deep seated pathological masochism and paradoxically befriends his blithely unsuspecting wife.

Verhoeven really goes to town with this material creating a monstrously entertaining picture of the darkest facets of upper class perversity lurking just under the surface of polished bourgeois propriety. This treatment of an extremely violent S&M relationship that is seemingly consensual -- or is it -- between sophisticated adults which will eventually lead to manslaughter, is presented with no excursions into psychoanalytic apologetics -- take it or leave it -- as Michele takes her punishment and ultimately her revenge.

Huppert has worked with other cunningly perverse directors before like Chabrol and Breillat, but teaming up with Paul Verhoeven who is clearly the master of molding titillation, shock, intrigue, and entertainment into a single cohesive package, the French superstar actress has scaled a new dazzling peak.

The title ELLE may seduce some into thinking this is a film about high fashion (which in a way it is!) but those with soft stomachs beware -- this is a series of shock waves that could shiver the timbers of even the most blasé intellectuals or aloofly critical critics. Please bear in mind that ELLE is a four letter word!

Elle is an unpredictable, messed up thriller with an very uneasy theme throughout. For me the biggest highlights were Isabelle Huppert's performance and the unpredictable, uncompromising depictions of sexuality. The issues i've had with this film though were mostly the dialogue and the unnecessary and absurd subplots such as the Michelle's father backstory and the whole Vincent's girlfriend thing. To start with the first one, it really takes away from the tension and the seriousness of the plot to have surreal cheap gags(?) like him killing himself just to not to have to talk to his own daughter. I mean he literally killed about a dozen people and lived with it for another 30 years or so but its his daughter visiting him that gets him to be desperate enough to hang himself?come on movie. The vincent thing is really predictable and clichéd , the scene when he first sees his son is straight out of a My Name Is Earl episode, and his girlfriend is your standart stereotype of annoying, unfair, demanding and cheating girlfriend. At the end of the day i find it very hard to believe that any of the characters in the film(except michelle) could exist in the real world as they seem very cartoonish and one note. All in all was a decent film even with some serious flaws. 7/10

It's an odd thing, but the press seems to almost unilaterally adore this latest film by Paul Verhoeven, with myself being an exclusion to that fact. Even though I love most of Paul Verhoeven's work - even going so far as to publicly consider the much maligned Showgirls a very fun film - I had a hard time appreciating this film. Even though I admit there's a number of things to appreciate about it.

First thing, it's a superb piece of acting by the lead, the fabulous French actress Isabelle Huppert. She delivers a grand performance as the protagonist, Michele, a powerful director of a video game company who one day unexpectedly finds herself the victim of a brutal rape by an unknown assailant. She effortlessly navigates the part of rape victim and dominant, matriarchal presence at her job and as head of her family of miscreants. Better yet, the dormant demons of her shady past awake to stir things up even more, which soon makes for an intense psychological game between herself and those around her. Nobody is a match for her, both in terms of character and in terms of acting. Sadly, the rest of the cast is nowhere near as exciting to watch and mostly consists of sleazy personas out to make her life more miserable. It's a shame less effort was put into making Michele's surroundings a bit more interesting, but with such a powerful performance as her own, it's hard to keep up.

Second, Verhoeven basically does what he has always done: not give a damn about cinematic conventions and do as he like without taking what many people would consider 'good taste' into account. His continuation of exploring the underbelly of man proves devoid of adhering to the usual norms of narrative progression. Whoever thinks the rape dictates the rest of Michele's actions is wrong, as she doesn't end up a victim of the act, but rather her environment becomes a victim of herself. There's no tear jerking drama here wherein the violated female must come to terms with the traumatic event, nor is there your typical Hollywood style thriller plot which sees the aggressor hunted down by a revenge driven survivor. Yes, Michele does take matters into her own hands and aims to find her rapist, but this detective story thread suddenly comes to a dead stop as the identity of the culprit is revealed earlier than expected, to unforeseen and rather incredulous results. Wherever you think the story is going, Verhoeven doesn't care about your expectations.

Such stubbornness I generally approve of, since there's enough predictable studio drivel going around already. Nevertheless, despite Verhoeven clearly putting his own stamp on Elle which makes it a rather unique final result, I still found it far from a satisfying movie. It's simply too rebellious for the sake of being rebellious. It's a strange and uncomfortable mix of a thriller, family drama and dark comedy, filled with wholly unsympathetic characters. It echoes Verhoeven's scandalous Dutch film Spetters, which saw the auteur heavily criticized and proved one of the prime reasons for him to switch from Holland to Hollywood (and a good choice that was!). However, that film was torn to shreds by critics, while 35 years later Elle is unanimously embraced. The times apparently have changed, but Verhoeven has not changed with them and continues to be an eternal provocateur. In the current political milieu, such an attitude is apparently rewarded. Just not by me. I appreciate Verhoevens refusal to change his style and stick to his (lack of) principles, but I much lament his cynicism. And though it seems the press doesn't share that perspective, I have a feeling many a regular audience member will agree with me upon seeing the strange shock that is Elle.