Review of Elle (2016) by Ryannanni — 23 Dec 2016

Look, I'm not even going to engage the question of whether this movie is essentially misogynist or not. I'm going to take the film at face value. Because I actually enjoyed the first third of the movie immensely. Isabelle Huppert's performance is fantastic and compelling, the concept of a woman dealing with a violent rape by sitting back and methodically preparing to take her revenge, and the way she treads through the male world she lives in are all compelling ideas!

But the story is a train wreck! And not in an enjoyable way!

The first engine of the movie is Elle's mission to track down her rapist. Very compelling.

Then we get this backstory that her father was a mass murderer. Also interesting enough to keep me watching. But not tied in to the rest of the movie in anyway whatsoever. It almost seems random.

And then some very boring subplots about her whiney son and his obnoxious girlfriend, and some casual relationships with the other people in her life. No tension driving those subplots.

And then! *spoiler alert*.

She discovers her rapist, it's the neighbor she has a crush on! Wow, interesting! The person she's been trying to track down this whole time! But then, she seemingly doesn't care at all! She lets him go, gets into a random car rack which he saves her from for some bizarre reason, she continues to hang out with him, he rapes her again but it's bizarre because the movie plays this like it's a bad thing but she also wants it maybe? Not clear. And then he tries to rape her again in the end which is totally undramatic at this point because she's totally given up on trying to stop him from raping her.

The last third of the movie lacks tension or any compelling conflict at all. This could've been a good movie.