When the great Isabelle Huppert received her Oscar nomination for Elle, I thought she had been rewarded for the wrong role as she had been excellent in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things To Come in the same year. Having now seen this highly controversial thriller, I have to concede the Academy may have got it right after all, as like Amy Adams also in 2016, she has provided two award worthy performances in the same year.
Huppert plays Michèle, a divorced middle-aged woman, who at the very start of the film is raped in her apartment. Having a very bad experience with the police as a child, and wanting to keep out of the media, she decides not to report the crime. She does, however, tell her closest friends. She tries to go on with her life as normal but soon starts to receive communications seemingly from the person who attacked her. She takes steps to protect herself, and believing the assailant is someone she works with, she starts to try to find who assaulted her.
So, we could easily have found ourselves in Death Wish territory, but director Paul Verhoeven, a man with some provocative films in his back catalogue such as Basic Instinct and Showgirls, takes the story in a very different direction. Huppert is a fearless performer and it is hard to imagine many other actresses being able to pull the role off without it appearing to be ridiculous or distasteful.
Anne Dudley’s old fashioned score helps add to the suspense and David Birke’s audacious screenplay is outstanding, mixing shocks with laughs in a very clever way.
Not for the feint hearted, but I found Elle to be thought provoking stuff with a magnificent central performance.
Rating: 8 out of 10