“I see you’re staying in character.” “A big part of my character is being unpredictable.”

Note: To the extent a character study can be spoiled, the following contains some spoilers—but if you don’t wish to know what happens in Elle, then you probably shouldn’t be reading about Elle, now should you?

Early in Elle, Paul Verhoeven’s latest provocation, Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) parks her car outside a restaurant at which she plans to have dinner with her ex-husband, Richard Casamayou (Charles Berling), her best friend and business partner, Anna (Anne Consigny), and Anna’s husband, Robert (Christian Berkel). Parallel parking, Michèle backs into another car—undeterred, she continues to nudge the car until it moves backward and its fender is detached (though…

Demonlover 2, indeed. There was certainly a sense that Assayas owed to Verhoeven in terms of aesthetics and provocation — hentai and CGI porn essentially mimicking RoboCop's cuts to absurd commercials, or its frankness toward sexual taboo, among other things. This returns here via video game cutscenes, perhaps as a discreet reminder of the director we're dealing with — one who has been largely absent for more than 15 years, save for 2006's Black Book — cutting into a film that is otherwise more restrained (for all its 'controversy'), more in tune with the sensibilities of European filmmaking. Raunchy as ever, but its intensity is set to a steamy simmer when compared to the erupting, chromatic, muscular vigor of Total…

Against my better judgement, you're all about to read one of the most personal things I've written. Because why not? It's much easier to say these things to a bunch of people you've never met, after all.

After Michéle is assaulted (the first time), she cleans the broken dishes off the floor, throws away the dress she was wearing, takes a bubble bath, and orders sushi.

After I was assaulted, I asked him to drive me back to my dorm, took a shower, went online, ate some late night ramen, and went to bed. Back to classes as usual the next day.

I didn't cry. I didn't think it counted as assault. I mostly withdrew. A blank stare became the…

tw: rape

the thing about this film, and all those other films where women "don't let their rape define them", "exacting revenge on their rapists" etc, is that they're so clearly made by men who have zero empathy for actual victims of sexual abuse.

there is nothing feminist/empowering about the story of a woman raped becoming "fascinated" by her rapist and deciding to "entertain" him with "a game of cat and mouse". sure, you could say that wasn't Elle's intended agenda. but the film definitely does harm whilst no good comes from it.

Elle does nothing to critique actual rapists in today's world, only using rape as a voyeuristic plot device. it feeds into the mainstream representation of rapists being…