ELLE (2016)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
SBS Productions, 130
minutes, R (nudity, violence, disturbing scenes)
★ 1/2
Let's get straight to the point: Elle is a violent misogynist film dressed up as a psychological
drama. It was the French entry for the Oscars' Best Foreign Picture award and
Isabelle Huppert was nominated for Best Actress consideration, but all that
shows is how male-dominated the film industry remains. I will grant that Ms.
Huppert's performance was riveting and courageous, but I wonder what the hell
she was doing in such a film in the first place.
Huppert plays Michèle Leblanc, a woman haunted by a horror
that befell her when she was ten: her wealthy father, seemingly without any
reason, went on a mass murder rampage. A journalist snapped a photo of the
child Michèle staring blankly into space, her face covered in soot from a
backyard burning of papers. Since then, both she and her mother have been
objects of hatred by those assuming they too are sociopaths. Unfair? Well…
mother Irène is a plastic surgery queen who takes up with younger men á la Zsa
Zsa Gabor, a behavior that disgusts Michèle, though one wonders why when she's
doing the same thing minus the surgery. She is divorced, estranged from her
son, Vincent, flirts with younger work colleagues, and sleeps around like a
nymphomaniac. She even has office sex with the paramour of her best friend and
business partner. Her justification? "I just wanted to get laid."
Michèle's job also arouses suspicion. She and her friend
Anna (Anne Consigny) are the founders and creative heads of a video game
company currently at work on a sex-, rape-, violence-, and gore-filled version
of Lovecraft's Cthulhu. Ratchet the drama when a masked man in black forces his
way into Michèle's apartment in broad daylight, throws her to the floor,
bloodies her face, and rapes her. Does she report it? No; in fact, it's days
later before she tells her colleagues what happened, an event she casually
dismisses as unworthy of pursuing further. Besides, she doesn't trust cops. She
doesn't even go to the cops when her company's server is hacked and Cthulhu's
female victim—and why is it always a
female victim?—has Michèle's face?
Is the above distressing enough for you? Wait, there's more.
SPOILER ALERT: Michèle seeks to find out the rapist's
identity so she can understand his dark motives. When she finds out, does she
go to the police? Nope. She has beat-down sex with him a few more times. Guess
she just wanted to get laid.
OK—I get the idea that both the attacker and Michèle are
damaged goods prone to living on the dark side. I get also that both try move
beyond those impulses by wearing disinterested masks. I guess Verhoeven wants
to make the point that Michèle's attacker is the logical extension of the
fantasies she sells. Or do both she and her rapist suffer from a toxic mix of
Piaget-level anxiety, anomie, and existential angst? Maybe Verhoeven is just a creep? He has, after all, given us
peep show dreck such as Diary of a
Hooker, Turkish Delight, Katie
Tippel, Showgirls and Basic Instinct (Tag
Line: You'll believe Sharon Stone has a vagina!)
I am at a loss to understand why Elle captivated critics. It is, as I said upfront, a misogynistic
film—one glommed onto some very silly and unnecessary side stories—Iréne's antics,
scenes with Vincent's total Gorgon of a girlfriend, obvious red herrings—to get
us to a finale that raises the ghoul bar another notch. Yes, Huppert is
excellent. Has she ever been bad? But one wonders why this film needed to be
made. Maybe there are self-loathing people like Michèle running around. If you
know any, for God's sake make sure they get therapy.
Rob Weir
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