by Peter J. O’Connell
Elle. Released:
Nov. 2016. Runtime: 130 mins. In French with English subtitles. MPAA Rating: R
for violence involving sexual assault, disturbing sexual content, some grisly
images, brief graphic nudity, and language.
A black cat passively watches an act of brutal violence
taking place. It is the rape by a masked assailant of a middle-aged woman, Michele
Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert), in her comfortable home in Paris. This is the
shocking opening scene of the new French film Elle. What follows is, perhaps, even more shocking. After the rape
Michele does not call the police or seek medical assistance. She simply cleans
up herself and the mess in the house and resumes her life. Oh, yes, she says to
her cat: “You didn’t have to claw his eyes out, but scratch him at least.”
Continuing her surprising behavior, Michele, who is the head of a successful
video game company, instructs her employees to make rape scenes in the games
even more violent.
These offbeat developments seem to “derail” right at the
start what could have been a rape-revenge thriller, such as those that
flourished on U.S. screens in the last quarter of the last century. Instead, Elle starts taking on aspects of a
characteristically Continental satire of relationships. Michele certainly lives
in the midst of a complicated web of them. Some of her employees are
alternately resentful of or infatuated with her. She feels detached from her
slacker-type son, who is dominated by his girlfriend, who is pregnant—but maybe
not by him. Michele has a contentious relationship with her mother, a cougar
type. But Michele still has a warm relationship with her ex-husband, while she
carries on an affair with the husband of Anna (Anne Consigny), her best friend
and business partner. Oh, yes, when they were younger, there were flickers of
lesbianism between Michele and Anna. And Michele is starting to develop an
erotic obsession with a neighbor, Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), who is married to
a devoutly religious woman.
But, actually, the rape-revenge thriller has not really been
derailed. As the movie goes on, the thriller moves increasingly to the fore.
Michele undertakes her own investigations, and commissions others, to try and
find out the identity of her rapist. We learn that Michele’s paranoia about
involvement with the police and press stems from her childhood when her father
was imprisoned for a horrendous crime. Now her father is about to be released
from prison, which is putting intense psychological pressure on Michele.
Eventually, after more violence, Michele learns the identity
of the rapist, but, contrary to what might be expected, that is not the end of Elle. Instead, it is the beginning of a
Hitchcockian--and unexpectedly sado-masochistic—cat (!)-and-mouse game (!) between
Michele and the attacker. It is a game in which Michele, entrepreneur of games,
writes the rules. “Elle” means “she” in French, and Michele is a kind of
idiosyncratic feminist heroine, refusing to accept in a conventional way the
various roles thrust upon her by fate or society—whether as child, parent,
wife, seductress, victim, revenger.
Director Verhoeven, a Dutchman noted for such U.S. films as RoboCop (1987), Basic Instinct (1992) and Starship
Troopers (1997), expertly steers through the twists and turns of the story,
with its mix of graphic violence and sexuality, subtle satire, and laser-like
shafts of dark humor. Isabelle Huppert gives a compelling performance, steering
through the twists and turns of her character’s personality with skill that
exceeds expertise, perhaps achieving brilliance. The rest of the cast provides
admirable support. The cinematography and other aspects of the production are, it
could be said, like that cat at the beginning of the film: quietly attending
upon the unquiet events transpiring.
.png)
