Staci Layne Wilson’s Elle review says the film is at once a sadistic stalker thriller, a revenge tale, a study of corporate espionage, a comedy of manners, and a family drama.

By Staci Layne Wilson
@StaciWilson

Director Paul Verhoeven had his heyday back in the awesome ’80’s with tawdry suspensers like Basic Instinct, sexy dark comedies like Showgirls, and wildly over-the-top sci-flicks like Total Recall, Starship Troopers, and RoboCop. His movies have been revered and reviled in equal measure. Love or loathe him, you cannot deny that Verhoeven is an auteur with a loud and unapologetic voice.

His latest, Elle, is a foreign film – its director is Dutch, while its cast and language are French – and that’s the only way it could exist. Had it been made here in the States by a studio, it would have been forced into a much smaller box. Mixing genres in a blender, Elle is at once a sadistic stalker thriller, a revenge tale, a study of corporate espionage, a comedy of manners, and a family drama. It brings to mind a 1940’s subgenre of melodrama once known as “women’s pictures” – the sort that starred badass dames like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck, and mercilessly showed them going through the wringer and coming out on the other side bruised but unbroken. Isabelle Huppert is perfect in the role as Michèle, a tough-as-nails manipulator who finds herself on the wrong side of the game.

When we first see Michèle at the beginning of the movie, she is being brutally raped in her own home by a ski-masked intruder. She fights back but to no avail. The attacker does the deed, roughs her up, and runs off. Michèle doesn’t cry. She doesn’t call the cops. She doesn’t tell a friend. Instead she locks the doors and windows, orders dinner delivery, and takes a hot bath. She’s got no time to fall apart – she runs a successful videogame production company; she’s supporting her deadbeat son and his pregnant girlfriend; and she’s trying to keep her elderly spitfire Mom from spending too much money on gigolos. And that’s not all. Michèle is also trying to come to terms with her ex-husband’s young yoga-instructor girlfriend; dealing with personal sabotage at work; and keeping secret her affair with her best friend’s husband. But wait – there’s more! Michèle’s father is a serial killer. And I haven’t even mentioned her weird neighbors yet.

Yep, there’s a lot going on in Elle. The glue that holds it all together is its lead. Huppert is fantastic. While her tour de force is still The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke’s unflinching study of sorrow and sadomasochism) we see a lot of nuance in this performance as she slips and slides between being both predator and prey. She is gorgeous and convincingly seductive, but the character is supposed to be much younger – for a very good reason I won’t spoil in my Elle review – than the actress’s actual years. Since her exact age is mentioned more than once, it pulled me out of the story.

What I love most about Verhoeven’s body of work is the wow-factor and guaranteed laughs (intended, and unintended). Elle does have a black comedy element to it, but it’s not nearly as fun as I had hoped it would be. Not that a rape-revenge flick should be “fun” but Elle didn’t quite have the sleazy exploitation stank of Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45, nor did it have the intense laser-focus of Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused. While each was interesting, the myriad subplots weakened the suspense and tension I was hoping for.

Elle feels like a few different movies, but it does present an intriguing question of what consent really means and how past and present experiences shape the mind, body and soul.

2 Hours 10 Minutes
Rated R

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ELLE Review — I’m With Her…Almost