Paul Verhoeven must have a fascinating inner life. The dude brought to life really interesting movies like Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct and Robocop, but also gave us hot garbage like Showgirls and Hollow Man. The 2000’s haven’t been kind to Verhoeven….until Elle. Elle is disturbing, lurid, and fascinating in equal measure, perfectly matching the boundary pushing Verhoeven with Isabelle Huppert, a perpetually fantastic French actress who excels with the juicy material the director provides.
We open on Michele (Huppert) being raped by a masked assailant…so you know, light fare. Her assailant continues to stalk her, leaving cryptic messages and body fluids scattered throughout her house. Michele, however, is a tough b word, and she continues to go about her life, which is kinda already a crazy story to begin with. Her idiot son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) is engaged to the unhinged Josie (Alice Isaaz); she’s flirting with her married neighbor’s husband Patrick (Laurent Lafitte); and she’s sleeping with her business partner Anna’s (Anne Consigny) husband Robert (Christian Berkel) among other intertwined relationships, like her dad committing mass murder with her witnessing it. This is starting to sound like your life, right?
The French setting goes a long way to why Elle is successful. Their casual take on sex makes Michele’s reaction to what happens to her make more sense, and makes it easier for Verhoeven to use less character beats in the middle than he would have to in a more conservative setting. For a non French person, this setting transplant provides a sense of surreality to the story that helps make you think you’re almost drifting in and out of Michele’s thoughts or dreams. Through that filter, we quickly get into how this woman goes through life: very grounded and matter of fact. After the rape, she calmly cleans up the mess and gets herself tested for STDs, just treating the attack like another complication in her already complicated life. We see her then start to take back control of her life, using her awakened feelings from this traumatic event to jolt her into high gear to put herself where she wants to be, including perhaps welcoming(?) another assault so she can put the burden on her shoulders. Elle doesn’t shy away from some soap opera level plot twists, but Michele keeps them grounded and rationalized to make sure she can deal with each problem.
Isabelle Huppert, vous etes magnifique! The French actress has been churning out just great work for over 50 years. In Elle, Verhoeven gives Huppert the chance to play this juicy character, Verhoeven’s finest femmes since Sharon Stone. Though Huppert’s outwardly performance is one of calm and rational behavior, the actress gives us insight into the inner workings of her mind, which showcases complicated sets of feelings at each trauma or plot twist she has to endure. No two scenes share the same set of double feelings, and Huppert makes Michele one of those great character enigmas film nerds like to discuss ad nauseum. On the supporting side Laurent Lafitte gets to do some very weird drama as the next door neighbor, Patrick, whom we really wonder what that guy is up to for a while. Charles Berling and Judith Magre are really good as Michele’s ex husband and mother, giving us believable insight and warmth as people who still care about Michele even though she’s at odds with them. All these supporting players dwarf Huppert though, who, like Michele, takes charge of every scene she’s Elle’s piece de resistance.
Maybe Paul Verhoeven needed a break for a decade. Maybe he needed Isabelle Huppert. Either way, I’ll wait a few years for another film from him if it is as solid as Elle. Thinking about it, it’s probably the French language and dark humor; Americans don’t have the guts to tell jokes that the French just drop casually into conversation.