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Elle
France / Germany / Belgium 2016
produced by Saïd Ben Saïd, Michel Merkt for SBS Productions, Twenty Twenty Vision, France 2, Entre Chien et Loup, Canal+, France Télévisions, Orange Cinéma Séries, Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC)
directed by Paul Verhoeven
starring Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling, Virginie Efira, Judith Magre, Christian Berkel, Jonas Bloquet, Alice Isaaz, Vimala Pons, Raphaël Lenglet, Arthur Mazet, Lucas Prisor, Hugo Conzelmann, Stéphane Bak, Hugues Martel, Anne Loiret, Nicolas Beaucaire
screenplay by David Birke, based on a novel by Philippe Djian, music by Anne Dudley
review by Mike Haberfelner
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One evening, pretty much out of nowhere, Michèle (Isabelle Huppert) is
attacked and brutally raped by a masked man. Interestingly she doesn't
report it to the police, orders food as if nothing has happened, and when
her son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) asks her about a visible scar, she lies to
him. She, being head of a computer game company, even goes to work as
usual, demands a rape scenes in one of the games they develop to be more
violent (and explicit), and other than her buying pepper spray and an ax
for protection, she acts as if nothing had happened. Heck, she even
mentions it a dinner with her ex Richard (Charles Berling) whom she's
still friend with, her business partner and best friend Anna (Anne
Consigny) and Anna's husband Robert (Christian Berkel), who's also
Michèle's lover, and while they are all shocked, she doesn't quite
understand what the excitement's about. But secretly she tries to find out
who her assailant was and the more she investigates, the more she comes to
the conclusion it's someone in her sphere of acquaintances. But that
doesn't keep her from excessively flirting with her (much younger)
neighbour Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), despite him being married to deeply
catholic and being much younger than Michèle. That said, she's still a
very charming woman ... Then though, Michèle's rapist returns, and this
time she manages to unmask him. But what's more shocking than his identity
is the way their relationship develops ... Now you can say many
bad things about Elle, it's over-convoluted, structured more like a
novel than a film, its character motivations are not quite clear, the
combination between violence and humour is a bit on the tasteless side,
and it's approach to rape is weird at least - and I'd agree with you on
most of this, but that said, Elle is a quite fascinating movie that
doesn't deliver a cookie-cutter story but twists and turns throughout, it
does feature well-fleshed out and multi-layered characters portrayed by a
first rate cast, and the direction is subtle to elegant but manages to get
down and dirty should need arise. Rather fascinating a movie, actually.
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