Elle (2016)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Dreadfully Boring

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It´s an insidious disease this; when people reach a certain notoriety or fame, in the eyes of quite a few people they can´t seem to artistically do anything wrong whatsoever. If you have made a name for yourself, whether that be in music, film, art etc., you have reached a godly status and are henceforth impeccable and unassailable as a creator. Nothing can touch you, and if by any chance you happen to see through the shoddy seams of the emperor´s robes, you are accused of not having depth enough to "get" the immortal creator´s vision. It looks like shit,it sounds like shit, it smells like shit and it sure taste like shit, but hey, what do you know?! It´s not really shit, it´s your own limited, narrowminded self that stops you from seeing what a transcendental masterpiece it really is. That is the kind of laughable nonsense being spouted from the mouths of the fawning idiots. Blindness sure comes in multiple forms, sigh... Verhoeven has made one decent film, Basic Instinct, and while not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, it at least had a certain tension and coldness to it that I remember I found tittilating. This piece of trash however? One of the worst films I´ve ever watched, it actually beggars belief.The main character is a middle aged woman who runs a gaming company, and one day out of nowhere a ski-masked man attacks her in her home and proceeds to rape her. Normally after such a harrowing experience one would think that the victim would experience severe mental trauma and would struggle to cope in her everyday life, because that is the hard reality, right? Of course it is, but hey what do you know? It turns out that this rape don´t faze our main character that much, in fact she doesn´t report it to the police, she really don´t want revenge, and she casually mention the incident to her friends. And hey, her friends, it turns out, aren´t that bothered by the episode either, just one of those pesky things that happens, you know. Our main character goes about her life, running her company, interacting with her retarded son ( who for the life of him can´t see that the baby his fiancee has just given birth to can´t be his, because you know, he himself and his fiancee is white as snow and the baby is at least four shades darker than him. Of course the baby is his, of course it is. And Verhoeven gets away with writing this shit?!!! ), her man-eating mother, her academic failure of an ex etc. In between the daily goings on of work and family feuds, a few more rapes is thrown in for good measure, none of them with any tension what so ever. After a while it´s revealed that her rapist is her good neighbour, the one she has a crush on. You would think that this revelation would destroy her world, but considering that the first rape didn´t really leave dent in her, this don´t make much of a negative impression on her artificial soul either. On the contrary, it turns out she quite enjoys being raped, and in between the rapes, she´s having dinner with him and the two of them seems to have quite the lovey-dovey relationship. One usually have such relationships with one´s rapist, doesn´t one? Nothing out of the ordinary I would think. If you want to sink your teeth into a film that is neither her nor there ( what does it want to be? a dark comedy? a psychological thriller? a family drama? a deep commentary on the dehumanizing of rape? an erotic romp in the delights of s&m? who knows and frankly who cares ), a film where every character is behaving and reacting like automatons and as such impossible to empathise with in any way ( none of them is expressing any real emotion, no response to the different situations occuring is in any sense close to reality ), a film despite it´s premise managing to display zero tension and thrill, by all means, go right ahead. Just be aware that the golden robe the emperor is wearing is an illusion, what is adorned around his body is on the contrary filthy, stinking, worthless rags. He is not a god at all, he is a beggar. His crown is mud.

Isabelle Huppert migh have signed a pact with the devil. She´s still incredibly sexy at over 60 years old and as unique as always. "Elle" it´s all about her (duh) and no other actress could have possibly made it. A classy production with moments of great tension but I find this to be a character study more than anything else. A woman and her circumstance: her family, her work, her friends and, of course, her sexuality. It might be controversial but it´s not cheap. She´s not an ordinary woman and her father and her mother both have an important role in the film as to know why. Everything else is plausible due to her condition, from her son´s character issues to her affairs and further. Nothing is taken lightly, every situation or decision is determined by her psychology.Now, I´ve seen how it enrages a lot of people. I guess they´re not familiar with Huppert´s work. There´s, of course, "La pianiste" but I find "Ma mère" to be worse. She´s always had a taste for moral uncertainty and she´s never been afraid of playing with its limits. Verhoeven is similar and this is a clear highlight in his appalling filmography. I wonder what would happen if "The Clockwork Orange", for instance, was made today? I´m not a fan of it but it´s widely regarded as a classic. We shouldn´t forget these are movies, not real life. Violence or pshycopathy are still a part of the human condition, however unpleasant they might be. I´m unfortunately close enough to rape reality to assert my opinion. "Elle" isn´t overly serious and never tries to be more than it is: two entertaining hours of drama.

Elle is an unpredictable, messed up thriller with an very uneasy theme throughout. For me the biggest highlights were Isabelle Huppert's performance and the unpredictable, uncompromising depictions of sexuality. The issues i've had with this film though were mostly the dialogue and the unnecessary and absurd subplots such as the Michelle's father backstory and the whole Vincent's girlfriend thing. To start with the first one, it really takes away from the tension and the seriousness of the plot to have surreal cheap gags(?) like him killing himself just to not to have to talk to his own daughter. I mean he literally killed about a dozen people and lived with it for another 30 years or so but its his daughter visiting him that gets him to be desperate enough to hang himself?come on movie. The vincent thing is really predictable and clichéd , the scene when he first sees his son is straight out of a My Name Is Earl episode, and his girlfriend is your standart stereotype of annoying, unfair, demanding and cheating girlfriend. At the end of the day i find it very hard to believe that any of the characters in the film(except michelle) could exist in the real world as they seem very cartoonish and one note. All in all was a decent film even with some serious flaws. 7/10

I am not a follower or scholar of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's worked. I liked a few of his films a lot, others left me indifferent. However, I recognize that there is a gulf between the incendiary films he made in the Netherlands, and what he does now, after establishing in Los Angeles and becoming an "international filmmaker". Between the man who made "Turkish Delights" (1973) and "The Fourth Man" (1983), to the one that directed "Basic Instinct" (1992) and "Showgirls" (1995). There is a transition from his early simple and honest movies to the standardized products made with high budgets, that lack the disturbing world vision in the first works. And after going up and down, between poor works and other more successful (as the amusingly proto-fascist "Starship Troopers" in 2000), Verhoeven returned to Europe taking with him the expertise of industrial cinema, mixed with some viruses that affect the cinema of Los Angeles. In 2016 "Elle" was released, his adaptation of the novel "Oh ..." by Philip Djian, which provoked debates and controversies about the vision of the female world and the "empowerment" of women. Long in excess (2 hours, 11 minutes) and with a pastiche and monotonous musical score by Anne Dudley, "Elle" tells the story of an unhappy, perverse and sick businesswoman who is experiences a curious regression towards her past and old family "values" , after reaching the lowest point of her downfall when she is violated repeatedly by a masked man. I do not deny that similar stories can occur in reality or that everyone perceives the cinema in their own way, but I really do pass. Verhoeven applied the skin-deep "know-how" he learned in commercial films to a story that demanded a bit more rigor, perception and sharpness. He opted for effects and sensationalism: maybe it was always the same in his film prehistory in Holland, and I never noticed it, I do not know... The cynical and feminazi audience of these times ended up applauding a character without ethics, without love, only with an insatiable and almost dry vagina. The "well-behaved" world discovered Isabelle Huppert! The actress does absolutely nothing here that she has not done the same or better in countless times... I do not know how many films to mention, because I've always liked what she does: "The Lacemaker", "Violette Nozière", "A Story of Women" , "The Ceremony", "The Pianist" ... In short, to each his own. Surely, there are those who liked it and want French cinema to lose its own signature and resemble one more melodrama from Hollywood. Bon appétit.