ELLE
Sony Pictures Classics
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya
Grade: B+
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Written by: David Birke from Philippe Djian’s novel “Oh…”
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 11/3/16
Opens: November 10, 2016
There’s a reason that stories with revenge themes are so popular no matter how many times they’re repeated on the page and on the screen. We all harbor memories of people we would like to hurt because they hurt us–today, last year, a few decades ago. When we see a hero getting violent revenge on the bad guys, we cheer, perhaps more readily than we would for any other action. In Tom Ford’s new movie “Nocturnal Animals,” a detective and the husband of a wife and child who were kidnapped, raped and killed get back at the thugs who perpetrated the senseless act. But “Nocturnal Animals” is strictly the American style of revenge drama, the kind we’d expect from Sam Peckinpah and Quentin Tarantino. There is a fairly straight line from crime to retribution. But Paul Vehoeven’s “Elle” finds a different style in reenacting the tale of a woman who seeks justice when she is beaten and raped by a man in a balaclava. There are clear indications that she is far from one hundred percent committed to dealing with the attacker violently because some part of her is not completely repelled by the action.
“Elle,” which is French for “Her,” justifies its title because Verhoeven’s movie is all about Michèle LeBlanc (Isabelle Huppert). Not only does she appear in almost every scene: her entire world revolves around her, as she is the owner of an operation that creates video games with themes of medieval violence. She is tough on the some two dozen young people who work for her, leading many to hate her. Therein lies the potential motive for the attacks against her. She is an amoral woman whose father killed twenty-seven people some thirty years back and is serving a life term. After many years his daughter is to visit him in prison when he is seventy-five years ago to “spit in his eye.” Her mother treats herself to Botox and hires a stud when desired. Michèle sleeps with another woman and with Robert (Christian Berkel), the husband of a woman she works with, and masturbates a man while both are standing, leaving a wastebasket on the floor as though this were simply a banal, everyday habit.
At least one of the workers in her video business produces an obscene animation of Michèle in the clutches of an octopus-like monster whose tentacles invade every orifice. Though she offers one worker a considerable sum to locate the perp, she seems emotionally neutral about the whole affair. An intellectual and emotional wreck who nonetheless runs a successful outfit, she is sort of person who would not react to stimuli the way you might expect, that is, if you’re an American and thinking that this French movie would proceed along a Hollywood projector.
Somehow director Paul Verhoeven has been in suspended animation for ten years, which is a shame. His film “Black Book” is arguably his best, about a Jewish singer who invades the office of the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Holland. Still, his best-known picture, “Showbiz,”—about a showgirl who seeks to rise to the top in Las Vegas–is considered by some one of the worst pictures ever, while others consider this an ingenious use of camp. With the current film, the 78-year-old Dutch director lucks out by engaging Huppert considered by some to be the world’s best actress.
“Elle,” then, is too sophisticated for typical American revenge lovers, though for that matter most Americans would probably shun anything foreign with English subtitles. Though presumably about retribution, “Elle” is more a piercing look at an upper-middle-class Parisian society, particularly with its sexual proclivities, which would satisfy any audience willing to put in the 130 minutes of mostly talk with abrupt moments of physical violence.
Rated R. 131 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall – B+
