'Elle'

In cinemas March 10th!

Based on the 2012 novel Oh… by Philippe Djian (Prix Interallié of the same year), Paul Verhoeven’s new film begins in complete darkness to the sounds of a woman being attacked. The screen then follows a well fed cat watching its wealthy bourgeois French lodgings pensively as the cat owner is being violently raped by a man in a ski mask. Later, Michèle, the rape victim, will ask her cat why the latter didn’t even budge.

Somewhat ironically, Michèle herself doesn’t really budge. Instead of calling the police and going through a meltdown, she takes a bath and waits until a fancy restaurant dinner with friends to share her news (just as Champagne is about to be popped, a moment of dark comedy at its best).
This moment might be more important for the film than we expect early on. Or maybe it’s just my walking into 'Elle' with the words “rape revenge film” glued to my brains, and a handful of preconceptions connected to them.

But 'Elle' isn’t all about Michèle’s rape. Her relationships to her friends and family, though apparently pleasant at first, are all flawed. In addition Michèle has a dark history with the police, which possibly accounts for her not seeking their help. Nearly reminiscent of Verhoeven’s infamous 'Basic Instinct', we soon find out that Michèle, now a successful businesswoman running a gaming company exploiting sex and violence to sell as many copies as possible, was involved in a blood-curdling crime as a child. Victim? Murderer? Accomplice? This is never fully disclosed, and interestingly the rape occurs just as Michèle’s father, a serial killer incarcerated for life, may finally be released.

With those elements at play, 'Elle' surprises as both a mid-life crisis drama, with Michèle’s relationship with her mother almost reminiscent of Huppert’s 2016 lighter drama 'L’Avenir' (Things to Come in English)...and as a thriller, hitting the genre’s codes (masked attacker, medieval axe, illicit affairs, knight in shining armour), like an homage to the genre itself.

This mix is the film’s greatest strength: unlike Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell, many of us know people like Michèle and her circle of friends. Thanks to Isabelle Huppert’s multilayered, internal yet transparent performance, we get drawn to her as if she were (like L’Avenir’s Nathalie) an everywoman protagonist, yet with the simmering fear she might be leading us on. And even as the end credits were rolling, I was sitting still, unable to get up and clueless as to what had just happened.

The supporting characters are also essential to this quasi mid-life crisis drama / thriller hybrid. For example, Michèle’s work environment is filled with employees who have something against her. Enough resentment for tasteless bullying, but not to reach full blown thriller level. Again, many of them look like the computer geeks and startupers we run into daily.

The same can be said of Michèle’s lover, of her neighbours, of her son... Each disarmingly normal, each with a chilling Shadow Self. This could happen next door. Unlike many thrillers, here there is no distance between us and them. This is also thanks to great casting and wonderful performances across the board (though Anne Consigny, Jonas Bloquet and Laurent Lafitte were particularly impressive. I only knew Lafitte from 'Les Petits Mouchoirs' and now hope to see more of his work).

The way the plot builds also flirts with this hybrid quality. As Michèle’s attacker begins to taunt her and she herself takes action, we experience the buildup of a thriller. But with the beginning of the resolution going back to regular drama, we get cozy a little too soon when Michèle comes clean with her entourage and is seemingly ready for a happier and more transparent life. Letting my guard down there directly led to my end credit armchair shock.
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Equally thrilling was Anne Dudley’s score; definitely a more haunting element of the film as well as a reflection of Michèle's complexity. Though the music is closer to the thriller genre, there is a lot more heart to it than in many, thus again, taunting us to embrace the characters as full human beings and route for them, no matter what their flaws are.

Though 'Elle' often flirts with thriller clichés like an homage to the genre’s classics, the details and the reality it creates put the film apart from a great many, and also put it in the coveted position to take its audience to unsafe territories. Whatever it was I was expecting to see from the film, 'Elle' definitely took me somewhere else and a thousand shades darker. Darker definitely, but with heart nonetheless.

Review by Anne-Sophie Marie.

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