Elle
(2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Verhoeven certainly loves courting
controversy, and in a year’s time he’ll still be courting controversy as a rare
octogenarian filmmaker (rare enough
that there are octogenarian filmmakers who aren’t Clint Eastwood, rarer still
that there are ones still fanning the flames of outrage). I didn’t find myself
outraged by Elle, though, I suspect
mainly because I was constantly aware of how calculated its provocative
elements are; in a way, this is as precisely designed to elicit a response as
his earlier Basic Instinct (with
which it very loosely shares a genre bracket), with streaks of black humour and
irreverence running through subject matter that usually (rightly) elicits the
most respectful and cautious treatment.
Isabelle Huppert is Michele Leblanc, who in the opening
scene is raped by a ski mask-wearing intruder but reacts not in the manner of
the traumatised, but rather as if this is just another incident in the daily
mix of events both pleasant and unpleasant (she proceeds to have a normal
evening’s dinner with her son). We initially suspect her blasé response is
over-compensation, putting on a composed demeanour, as do her friends when she
eventually tells them (following the second incident, which she doesn’t
mention).
But there’s evidently more going on within her psyche, a
steeliness that set in during childhood after being associated with the crimes
of her father (locked up after going on a killing spree and now refused parole).
We even wonder if she too might tend towards the sociopathic, but then she cares
for a tiny bird her cat has been mauling, which would seem to rule that out (a reading has been presented that she’s a sociopath because she doesn’t respond
to the rape, even that she was the
killer, not her father, although that feels like a little too much like the
kind of schematic twist – of the Basic
Instinct variety – that would fully immerse the picture in the genre landscape
Verhoeven appears to be trying to avoid, loose mechanisms aside).
Michele’s job as the producer of computer games involves her
unemotionally instructing an aggressive, headstrong male programmer on upping
elements of sexual violence and violation. Meanwhile, she’s unscrupulously
conducting an affair with her best friend’s husband (her friend is also her
business partner) and flirting with her neighbour Patrick (Laurent Lafitte) while
expressing contempt for the personal choices of her son Vincent (his
girlfriend’s baby clearly isn’t his) and mother Irene (announcing she is going
to marry someone half her age). And then, when she learns the identity of her
rapist (her neighbour), she responds by continuing the liaison as a
particularly dangerous game.
Which is Verhoeven’s film, a dangerous game setting out its
store in dangerous territory. It’s also as confidently, boldly engrossing as
anything he’s done. The very positing of an anti-traumatised protagonist is one
thing, but in staging this tale, Verhoeven utilises tools very much of the
thriller genre. There’s a mystery throughout – who is the rapist; is he the one
superimposing her face on the video game? – with liberal red herrings dropped
into the plot.
You might – legitimately – argue the whole premise of
Verhoeven and screenwriter David Birke’s project (adapted from Oh… by Phillipe Dijan) is irresponsible,
but you might equally conclude it’s unlikely anyone who might misinterpret it
as undermining the seriousness of the subject would be going near an art movie like
this anyway. Notably, the picture was originally intended for a US shoot, but
the problems finding an American lead willing to take the part nixed the idea.
Verhoeven commented that, if filmed there, its content would have pushed it (even)
more towards Basic Instinct and “a lot of the things that are important to
the movie would probably have been diminished. By bringing it more into a
thriller direction, I think it would have lost everything. It would probably
have been banal and transparent”. And it would probably also have
unequivocally crossed the line in the subject it is exploring.
Huppert portrays Michele with subtle gradations; so many of
her choices are unsympathetic, or outright conflicting (when she calls Patrick
after hitting a deer and crashing her car), and yet in many of them (be they in
respect of her son, lover or mother) we can readily appreciate them. She admits
her liaison to her best friend Anna (Anne Consigny) in the most incautious of
arenas (“Because I don’t want to lie any
more”), but her motive appears genuine, and she is fortunate that Anna proves
the most forgiving of companions.
Huppert commented, “Obviously,
the movie’s about a woman, But it’s also about men, you know, and the men are
sort of fading figures, very weak, quite fragile. So it’s really about the
empowerment of a woman”. Indeed, one of the most telling moments comes at
the end, when son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet), an emotional doorstop to a
manipulative and scolding partner Josie (Alice Isaaz) throughout, is seen
emboldened and confident, reconciled with her after their separation, and
there’s no doubting this change has come through the act of killing, of
asserting his primal masculine instinct (some readings have Vincent as the
initial rapist, but that seems again, a bit too twisty).
The other men are equally displaced, from her ex-husband (Charles
Berling) having an affair with a young yoga instructor (who ends it with him)
to her partner’s other half (Christian Berkel), jealous of Michele’s
flirtations and unwilling to accept the end of the affair. As for the rapist,
his response to Michele probing his motivation is simply “It was necessary”; he can be aroused only by such aberrant
behaviour, and since his sense of sexual identity is all-consuming, he
considers it necessary.
The picture does leave question marks in terms of plot, and
that can be problematic if they threaten to overwhelm those that ought to hold
sway thematically or in terms of character. Some are merely intriguing, such as
how much Patrick’s wife knew (“I’m so
glad you could give him what he needed” isn’t exactly her admitting she
knew he was a rapist, but it could certainly be read that way). Others, such as
how her son came to be back home to kill Patrick, are more preoccupying (she
didn’t appear to ask him, so it doesn’t look like they conspired, as Patrick’s
“Why?” might suggest, but it feels
like a stretch to suggest he was lifting wine at the party in order to drug his
mother).
It should also be emphasised that Elle is shot through with humorous incident, not least a dinner
party from hell that takes in everything from Michelle’s mother (Judith Magre) announcing
her engagement, to Patrick’s devout wife (Virginie Efira) asking to put the Mass
on against a most unreligious backdrop. The ashes sequence is also very funny.
Verhoeven and Birke might be accused of irresponsibly
fuelling the tendency to the patriarchal gaze, but that would be to ignore
Huppert’s input in the picture. And conversely, Verhoeven’s never been one to
lead a cause, but rather takes an idiosyncratic path; it’s self-evident this isn’t a feminist film, as some would
claim, but it’s easier to define Elle by
how difficult it is to pigeonhole than what it may or may not be saying.
Certainly, if some of the theories expounded regarding its possible twists are
in the ballpark of the authors’ intentions, I’d argue that it makes it a less
interesting picture, and one consequently more culpable in terms of simply
being transgressive for the sake of it. So I’ll give the mad Dutchman benefit
of the doubt on that score. One thing is abundantly clear; he’s lost none of
his cinematic touch.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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