On my wall of alphabetically listed DVDs, smack-dab between Ella Enchanted and Emma, you will find this little French gem. A more far-removed film, however, could hardly be placed here, as the titular protagonist is nearly polar opposite to her fairytale counterparts. While the feminist elements of each film will certainly provoke spirited debate, that's not the primary difference with Elle: this movie is unrelentingly horrific.
We might expect as much from director Paul Verhoeven, whose Basic Instinct still riles up many a cinephile contemplating images of women in film. To only slightly less extent, his presentation of this film nevertheless centers on the limits of a woman's body and spirit faced with brutal violence. Yet for all its cruelty, Elle doesn't seem to harbor the same ill will toward womanhood and female sexuality as Basic Instinct. Indeed, we might fairly say that the 1992 noir flick was an erotic thriller; Elle is anything but that, as the narrative starts, continues, and ends with rape.
Michele, assertive head of a video game company, seems to have few healthy relationships. Her workplace underlings hate her and lust after her. Her business partner Anna is her closest friend, but their relationship is ambiguously erotic, and Michele is secretly sleeping with Anna's husband. Michele chastises her son for his lackluster career and for submitting to his manipulative and probably unfaithful girlfriend. Michele's ex-husband is still friendly, but his new wife is subject to Michele's fierce criticism. Michele flirts with her devout Catholic neighbor's husband. And Michele resents her narcissistic mother and her affairs with younger men. Finally, Michele hardly benefits socially from her parentage, as her father was a notorious mass-murderer who involved Michele in his crimes.
Despite all this, Michele is hardly the kind of woman to whom things happen; she actively does, though her actions are usually less than kind. After the opening scene, when she is raped by an intruder wearing a mask, she immediately cleans the mess and resumes her life without telling anyone. Suspecting all the men in her life, Michele begins hunting the man who violated her. She seems unconcerned about her troubled relationships and her cruelty toward even the people closest to her. She subverts and challenges our expectations at every turn, never playing a victim and instead actively using sex, violence, and sadism to assert her independence and transcend her surroundings.
A gripping, haunting odyssey into the heart of a woman, Elle is a brilliant film. It's also anything but easy. Endlessly complex, totally unpredictable, it presents us with a figure we're supposed to identify with, and then leaves us breathlessly wondering if she was the hero or the antihero. Did we just witness a sociopath's rape-revenge story? Is it fair to question her mental health after what has happened to her? Should we applaud her resolve, commend her intelligence? Should we condemn her sadistic fantasies, her emotional violence? Similarly, we might feel ambivalent about the film itself: Are the rape scenes excessive? What does it do to the audience to see a raped woman actively engaging in rape sex scenarios with her rapist? Are we supposed to know where the consent is, where the line of abuse is crossed? None of these are easily answered in the film's context. Then again, what is the film's context? Is it a dark drama, a psychological thriller, a psychosexual horror flick, a disturbing romance? Is it fair to the woman character's perspective to label her experience as something negative at all? I just don't know.
The film is problematic, there is no question of that. But, as we saw in Gone Girl and Basic Instinct and in many other films, there is always more to be said. Praise and condemnation are easy to shout out but harder to apply, and that's where Verhoeven succeeds here. Because that's life, isn't it? Messy and confused, twisted and dark, life doesn't play by the rules. Isabelle Huppert plays into that as our protagonist, refusing to be categorized as a villain or victim in a film whose premise would normally beg for those archetypes. It's a dazzling work, and one that deserves a lot of discussion afterward. Don't watch it alone or before bed; you'll do yourself a disservice in avoiding its challenges.
IMDb: Elle
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