Paul Verhoeven is my all-time favorite director, responsible for such masterpieces as Robocop[1987], Showgirls[1995], Starship Troopers[1997] to name a few. I took a big chance going to the cinema to watch his latest movie though. It is French and we all know what French movies are like. Hysterical women screaming all the time, all while they are bitch slapping or getting bitch slapped every 5 minutes.
Luckily, this movie is not quite like that. Surely, there are insane and somewhat irrational women (and men.) And everybody is fucking everybody else's wives or husbands behind their backs or more or less in front of them. The main character Michèle Leblanc [Isabelle Huppert] is the daughter of a hated mass murderer, and she gets raped by an unknown man wearing a mask. It is rather easy for the viewer to guess who the rapist is though, so don't expect a very complicated thriller here. The rape is not very graphical and neither is the limited violence in the movie, so don't expect any Robocop ultra violence either.
After watching this movie I still believe that the French are insane (at least on film) and I still don't like French movies very much. It was entertaining though, and the movie has a lot of dark humor in all it's fucked up Frenchness and far-out complicated relationships, and even if it's not the type of Verhoeven movie I prefer, it was still worth seeing.
Isabelle Huppert does a very great job playing the über bitch and this is mostly her movie. It wouldn't have been unfair, if she'd won an Oscar for her performance, but the movie is probably way too French for that.
Rating:
Movie Title: Elle
Director: Paul Verhoeven
This Release: 2016
Genre: Drama
RunTime: 130
Actor: Isabelle Huppert
Movie Format: Bluray
Content Type: Movie Review
Language:
Updated: 2017-03-19 17:20
Created: 2017-03-19 17:17