Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) is a well-off Parisian CEO of a video-game company. Her past includes a childhood trauma and her life is troubled in various ways among family, friends, and people at work. Things get worse when she is brutally raped and has a very unusual response to the situation.In the film's favour, it is very well directed by Paul Verhoeven who creates a dark and mysterious mood. He is well aided by the haunting musical score by Anne Dudley. Huppert is also marvelous in the lead role. This is to be expected as her presence and performances always raise her films to a higher level.The trouble is in the role itself as well as the script. Yet again, Huppert plays a twisted sadomasochist like she did in "The Piano Teacher". While she can be praised for taking on dark roles, it would be nice for the sake of contrast to see her in a cheesy rom-com in which her greatest dilemma would be deciding what to buy as a Christmas gift for a loved one.Despite potential sympathy for all that has happened to her, Michèle, like almost everyone else in the movie, is unlikeable. David Birke's screenplay has too many oddities and leaves too many loose ends by the conclusion. It also has a very contorted view of the traumatic experience of rape - something that leaves a poor taste by the end.

Having read many reviews on this film, it's fair to say Elle splits opinions; it's either a masterfully acted, powerful psychological drama, or a convulted piece of drivel with gratutitious sex and violence. I was intrigued to watch this after reading some of the reviews, particularly of Hubbert's 'Oscar-worthy' performance, though disappointly, I happen to share the latter viewpoint. This is a film trying to be clever, and getting it all wrong. I have so many issues with this film; Firstly, for it to be a great psychological drama there has to be some genuine intrigue as to who the mystery rapist is. Considering there's only really about 2 or 3 possible suspects, one of whose character's is never built sufficiently for it to be him, and another is quickly suspected then discounted in the same breath, it hardly becomes a real whodunnit... more of a baffling why... and even more bafflingly/ troublingly why she reacts like that. Also, why reveal his identity part way through and then have nothing come of it... it was quite anti-climatic (unlike all of her sexual encounters). The (totally pointless) back story of the serial killer Dad is perhaps meant to provide some explanation for why she troublingly seems to let all men, except her ex-husband and some random employee at work, walk all over her. She's presented as obstentiously this hard-nosed women who'll take no prisoners at work and who'll never forgive her ex who once hit her, but then but will forgive the random masked stranger who comes in, beats the shit out of her and rapes her repeatedly, yeah sure that makes sense. Perhaps she's meant to subconsciously feel guilty or unworthy of love, but that's never really expressed and she seems to have no qualms about cheating on her childless best friend and admiring herself in the mirror, so perhaps that's not the case. As someone else has mentioned, it's not just Michelle who has bizarre emotionless reactions to events. Really no-one in the film really reacts with anything even remotely resembling human emotion to anything that happens to them, making it genuinely difficult to relate to any of the characters. Her son seems absurdly dumb, grinning inanely in front of the clearly mixed raced baby in front of his black friend; her friend is oddly calm on hearing her best friend and husband have been cheating on her, the uber religious woman isn't at all mad/ sad her husband's dead, everyone is allowed to say the most offensive things to each other and just get away with it and after one car accident, two affairs, three break-ups, multiple deaths, several rapes and a cacophany of other shit that would bring down even the strongest individual no-one cries.... the whole thing is bizarre!The plot has more stories (and plot holes!) in it that a latin american telenovela. Everyone has some psychological disorder/ lazy stereotyping; the son is a lazy layabout, good for nothing, his girlfriend is a blonde pyscho, her mother is in denial of ageing/ ever been married to a serial killer, there's the pretty pious one, the ex with a thing for younger yoga instructors, the clueless, kind best friend, the sleazy lothario best friend's husband, the token black guy, the list goes on... The most troubling thing in this film is the portayal of woman and what they either do, or have to put up having done to them; Michelle, the main character; receives physical assaults for the actions of her father when she was a child, sexual harrassment at work by an employee, verbal assault by an employee, is used for sex by her best friend's husband - despite callling it off- after a car accident which leaves her in crutches and his response was 'well we won't be skiing' and then plays dead during intercourse, is harrassed by journalists and is raped several times - something she claims she can't report to the police because of her past involvement with her father's crimes, in someway implying she believes/ accepts she deserves it, and is beaten to the point of near unconsciousness. Her mother is used by a younger guy who wants to screw the wife of a serial killer, her friend accepts the betrayal of her best friend and suggests to move in with her and the daughter in law is presented as erratic, unfaithful, controlling and irresponsible. If anyone has pyschological issues in this film, then I'd say it's the director! He has a disturbing attitude towards women. If fact, it's pretty ironic this film is called Elle/ Her, as the perspective couldn't be any more masculine; of course she works making erotic, demeaning to women video games, of course she's letting herself be abused by a stranger, taken advantage of by a friend and showing herself as sexually provactive to a neighbour. Of course all women masturbate over a man across the street moving furniture - or they do Verhoeven's sick head. Of course she's wearing revealing, rip openable dresses and sexy underwear to be raped. Of course she tells her friends calmly of the rape, and then suggest they order food. Of course she has a terrible relationship with her mother, a disapproving reaction to her son's girlfriend and a jealous reaction to her ex's new partner. Verhoeven has made some kind of sick fantasy of his into a film, where this women secretly enjoys being attacked, beaten and raped. The rape scenes are genuinely shocking and if i believe they were done to show the horror of sexual violence I could just about contenance their inclusion, but to me they feel gratutitous and profoundly disturbing to watch, let alone film. In the week in which the topic of male director's subjecting female actors to distressing scenes in the name of art, it's worth again considering whether this is art, or abuse of power. Of course in his eye's a 'strong female character' means detatched and devoid of emotions and complicit in her own abuse. I really struggle to see how anyone can watch this film and view any of the female characters as strong, any of the reactions believable and any of the plot line convincing. Some good acting (Isabelle Hubbert should have saved her talents for a film worthy of them) and good camera work aside, this film is a farce.

Elle is an unpredictable, messed up thriller with an very uneasy theme throughout. For me the biggest highlights were Isabelle Huppert's performance and the unpredictable, uncompromising depictions of sexuality. The issues i've had with this film though were mostly the dialogue and the unnecessary and absurd subplots such as the Michelle's father backstory and the whole Vincent's girlfriend thing. To start with the first one, it really takes away from the tension and the seriousness of the plot to have surreal cheap gags(?) like him killing himself just to not to have to talk to his own daughter. I mean he literally killed about a dozen people and lived with it for another 30 years or so but its his daughter visiting him that gets him to be desperate enough to hang himself?come on movie. The vincent thing is really predictable and clichéd , the scene when he first sees his son is straight out of a My Name Is Earl episode, and his girlfriend is your standart stereotype of annoying, unfair, demanding and cheating girlfriend. At the end of the day i find it very hard to believe that any of the characters in the film(except michelle) could exist in the real world as they seem very cartoonish and one note. All in all was a decent film even with some serious flaws. 7/10

It is often unhelpful to try to squeeze a film into a single main idea and that is even more true if the film is a good one. But I am going to break my own rule here to talk about the latest film by Paul Verhoeven. Not that I think Elle lacks nuance, but without seeing the thread that binds this film together, the intentionally provocative tone of the film can detract from its merits and push the film into lazy pigeonholes: misogynistic, exploitative, incoherent and if you are looking for a longer list of pejorative adjectives, Richard Brody's review in the New Yorker is an excellent thesaurus.Elle starts with a rape scene and what follows is how the main character, Michèle, deals with this presumably traumatic experience. I say presumably because her reaction to this incident throughout the film defies all expectations of how anyone might react to an assault. After the intruder leaves her house, she gets up, with some difficulty of course, sweeps the broken plates off the floor, takes a bath and orders takeout for dinner. And when she finally realizes that the rapist after all was her neighbour, someone whom she happened to have a crush on, the viewer is confronted with another what-the-heck moment when she, this time willingly, gets herself beaten down again. Let's start with the easiest hypothesis to refute. This film is plainly not about the damage rape can do to the victims, the film doesn't even try to make the protagonist likable enough to get the viewer's sympathy. A revenge thriller with a strong female cast? Surely there is an element of revenge in the film but it is hard to reduce it to a revenge story when the protagonist is drawn to her rapist. A misogynist story, disguising itself behind a criticism of conventional morality to show rape as a common fantasy and not all that terrible in reality? If she, a woman with a strong and dominant personality throughout the film, subconsciously yearns submission, why does she have to ruin her dream came true by taking her revenge at the end? And here is why I think a single main force behind Michèle's actions can save us from this confusion, and that force is not morality, or a sense of justice or shame or anger, or the society's pressure, but the agency to do what she desires to do in spite of all that. What the film is doing here is highlighting agency by taking the notion to its unnerving and sometimes darkly comical extreme. After the assault happens, she is physically hurt but mentally settled enough to order a takeout. She doesn't call the cops not because she is embarrassed or afraid of telling people what happened, she tells her ex-husband and friends about the story in the restaurant scene after all, but why bother with the cops if she can take matters in her own hand? Her reaction is no different every time someone reminds her of her mass murderer father out of spite, she keeps calm and carries on. But why does she willingly fall prey to the neighbour's sadistic behaviour? Is she a masochist? Well, the last thing she probably cares about is we pondering what she is or she is not.This is not to say that Elle should be seen as a manual on how to handle sexual assault, or as a realistic character study of Michèle and her motives. What the film does though, so effectively and so outlandishly, is bring to life not perhaps the most lovable but a memorably strong character that leads her life with the ultimate agency.