Review of Elle (2016) by Matt C — 04 Dec 2016

If there's anything that we've (hopefully) learned by now thanks to the news in the past couple months--specifically of that involving Donald Trump--it's that not all survivors of sexual assault cope in the same way.

It's pretty common to paint survivors as broken people with not much agency to them, and they're often seen as being subservient to those in power. It's just one of the reasons that Elle is a powerful and effective--if imperfect--thriller, one with surprisingly effective humor and a fully fleshed out protagonist played greatly by Isabelle Huppert, although it does have some hiccups in pacing as well.

Michèle (Huppert) is the head of a video game company who one day is raped by a masked assailant in her home. She deals with it at first in an introspective and sullen manner, not making much of a deal out of it.

She's dealing with her own issues both professionally and personally and she won't let anything get in the way of that. However, she begins to find herself in a game of cat and mouse with her attacker who sends her disconcerting messages and begins stalking her, and she begins to gain the upper hand in the series of interactions.

What's interesting is that you have to keep in mind that it isn't that a woman wouldn't normally react like this, but that a movie character wouldn't react like this. The movie, however, does a very good job at illustrating her professional and personal lives, including her relationships with her son, neighbors, father, co-workers, and friends.

Michèle has seen some stuff in her life and is a bit jaded as a result, and understandably so. She's a strong woman, but the movie isn't in-your-face about it at all. Her sense of agency is realistically drawn to make her feel like at least one woman that you know, and Huppert is great here.

She balances the emotions of the characters including the conflicting fragility and toughness, all while maintaining a great onscreen presence. Despite the movie being very heavy at times, it also works in the form of entertainment, which could very easily fall into exploitation and grossness.

Paul Verhoeven as a director knows when to play something as tense and visceral--and there are several scenes like that--and when to play up the comedy in interactions. Elle is actually a very funny movie at times but the tone doesn't suffer because the comedic moments are disconnected enough from the central story to create the feeling of a woman's life instead of simply acting as comic relief.

However, the movie does occasionally feel a little too narratively crowded from time to time. There are multiple subplots that develop Michèle's world, and while they're generally effective, they sometimes don't feel entirely necessary and mess with the pacing as a result.

The movie is 130 minutes, which isn't horribly long or anything, but it still has some parts that feel stretched out. Juggling these subplots also makes the film a little disjointed at times, so these flaws act as warts on what is otherwise a brisk, economical thriller.

Elle isn't a perfect movie, but it's one of the better movies of the year. Isabelle Huppert is really great in her role and fits the character very well, and it helps that the character is already well defined to begin with.

The inclusion of humor was risky but I applaud its effectiveness, and although the movie feels too long from time to time, it's definitely engaging, and it surely has characters that are more interesting than most.

8.1/10, really good, B+, above average, etc.