Off the back of Phillippe "Betty Blue" Dijan's novel and a screenplay by David Birke (whose previous credits include a raft of TV schlockers and direct to video horror), he and Isabelle Huppert have concocted a curiously enigmatic treatise on sexual politics and gender relations.
The thing is, I hear tell, the concocting has been done cross purposes, leaving Elle prone, pulled in fascinatingly conflicting directions. It is at once perplexingly sprawling and dangerously precise. It encapsulates the "grey area" to perfection, without dismissing the fact that the "grey area" as a concept has long past its use-by date. It is laughably provocative, which does nothing to lessen its provocation.
Critics scrambling for labels have settled on "rape comedy", which Verhoveven resists, quite justifiably. Yes, the film opens with the rape of Huppert's successful game developer character, Michèle Leblanc, (a scene that plays over multiple times throughout the film), and yes there is some deft family comedy, much aimed at Michèle's acerbic reactions to her very beautiful, very stupid son, Vincent (Jonas Bloquet), and her highly sexed, highly "tightened" mother, Irène (Judith Magre), but the two rarely co-exist bar for the frame of the film.
There are many parts at play here: rape, infidelity, religion, aging, masculinity, femininity, emasculation, emancipation, sadism, mass murder and sexual assertion. And yet, even with so much thrown in, Elle manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. With so many disparate issues in the mix and so many unreliable vantage points (including both Huppert's and Verhoeven's), the viewer is forced to construct their own truth from the many potential truths to hand. Not many will be comfortable. If you need a benchmark for discomfort, Huppert's previous foray into territory this murky, Haneke's The Piano Teacher is a cake walk.
Ultimately, while I may not be convinced that Elle has a whole lot to say of its own volition, I am convinced that there is real art in the way it provides voices disparate enough to enable others to speak on its behalf. It is brave of both Huppert and Verhoeven to toy with such dangerous open-ended enigma in the arena of consent and sexual violence, especially when dressing their film as high-brow schlock. But they succeed, and while post-viewing discussions are sure to be volatile, they will definitely not want for context.
★★★☆
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