Critique of FILMSTARTS.de editorial Elle – film starts

5.0

From Christoph Petersen

What a comeback !!! After his thrilling Nazi thriller “Black Book” of 2006, the career of Paul Verhoeven seemed already over, after all, fell over the past decade apart from his crowdsourcing experiment “Tricked” all his projects started back in on itself or were like “the Paperboy” ultimately implemented by other directors, but as some have the Dutchman apparently written off too early. with the premiered in competition at the Cannes film adaptations “Elle” delivers the now 77-year-old with his first French-speaking work again one of the best films of its of masterpieces not just poor career (including the 5-star films “Basic Instinct” and “Total Recall” !) the both intelligent and crazy Rape- & amp; -Revenge-arthouse thriller impressed not only by its provocative and progressive, elegant and playful nature, but also with – again – towering Isabelle Huppert that here one of the fascinating and surprising female characters the thriller story conjures on the canvas

Michelle (Isabelle Huppert) is raped in her villa by a burglar with ski mask, but it is not addressed to the police -. with whom she had already made the age of ten bad experience when her father one day is massenmordend pulled through the neighborhood. Your best friend and business partner Anna (Anne Consigny) and her ex-husband Richard (Charles Berling) tells the wealthy computer game entrepreneur at a dinner in the restaurant quite dry from the thing – no big deal, only the heads of the already ordered champagne is for shifted a few minutes. It almost seems as if Michelle equally pragmatic and quick-witted deal with rape as with everything else in their lives. But then you send the intruder suddenly even lewd SMS …

Even with 77 years explores Paul Verhoeven, who was not only with the then misunderstood “Starship Troopers” ahead of its time, the boundaries of the medium still more systematically than most of his younger colleagues – it has not changed in three decades since the violence satire “RoboCop”. The first and greatest charm point is the director this time directly with its complex, elusive Writer: Michelle pragmatism appears to the public as pure provocation, such as when she orders one day after the rape her game designers in the meeting that the heroine of the current game in the attack of a tentacle monster necessarily even have to twitch a lot orgiastic. Isabelle Huppert ( “The Piano”) embodies Michelle consequently not as victims, but as self-confident, quick-witted, dry humored, their (male) counterparts not only intellectually superior, but sometimes pretty fucked woman who knows to assert themselves and take what she wants …

… and what that is exactly, makes the final provocation perfectly – and will push open a part of the audience really angry! Surprisingly, it was after the Cannes press screening in the hallway mostly male colleagues, the “Elle” misogyny accused – and it is around the theatrical release surely give a lot of fiery opinion texts in which it will go exactly to this question. But it’s one of the greatest strengths of the film that it is predictable at any time – and by that we mean less that he surprises us with unexpected plot twists, but rather the narrative and directorial liberties Verhoeven takes. Since it can happen that it just short times completely the genre changes when it suits him. So at this point just as much once without spoiler: If there something like a feminist Rape- & amp; can -Revenge movie ever give, then “Elle” the first to deserve this predicate

and now one more time with spoilers : the identity of the Skimaskenmannes airing of the film unexpectedly early – and it is no real surprise. But rather than report it to the police or to retaliate according to the rules of the genre to him, Michelle begins an affair with the man, and can be repeated rape under (half played) RPGs from him. This exploration barely tolerable passions and perversions is “Elle” becoming the delightfully absurd, terrifying comic grotesque – from here the film then reminded less of exploitation models as much more like the snappy black society satires of Claude Chabrol ( “Sweet poison “). Michelle never appears as willing contributors of male fantasies (her ex-husband left her because he has beaten her) and she is not sexy Fetischrächerin as in most films usual with similar themes – but it always remains a confident, ambivalent and especially consistently falling from its intended role of society woman

Conclusion:. Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” is a brilliantly-cryptic, progressive, sauvergnügliches game with the rules of the thriller genre, the role of women and good taste – sophisticated, never predictable and to breaking point politically incorrect.

We have seen “Elle” at the 69th Cannes Film Festival, where the film was shown in competition.