Movie · 2016 · Drama, Thriller · 2h 11m · R · French
Curator score: 7.4/10 (167.7K ratings)
Overview
When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.4/10
IMDb: 7.1/10
Letterboxd: 3.70/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Metacritic: 89
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Paul Verhoeven
Production
France 2 Cinéma, SBS Productions, Twenty Twenty Vision Filmproduktion, Proximus, Entre Chien et Loup
Cast
Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling, Virginie Efira, Judith Magre, Christian Berkel, Jonas Bloquet, Alice Isaaz, Vimala Pons, Raphaël Lenglet, Arthur Mazet, Lucas Prisor, Hugo Conzelmann, Stéphane Bak, Hugues Martel, Anne Loiret, Nicolas Beaucaire, David Léotard, Loïc Legendre
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, unnerving thriller that mixes provocation, black comedy, and psychological cat-and-mouse tension. It’s not for everyone, but it’s one of the more intellectually slippery and performance-driven films of its kind.
Best for
viewers who like morally ambiguous thrillers
fans of icy, controlled performances
people interested in taboo, power, and gender politics
audiences open to discomfort and provocation
Skip if
you want a straightforward rape-revenge narrative
you’re sensitive to sexual violence and coercive subject matter
you prefer clear moral framing or emotional catharsis
you dislike abrasive tonal shifts between satire, drama, and suspense
Overview
Elle is a tense, unsettling thriller that refuses to behave like a conventional victim-centered drama. Paul Verhoeven turns a home invasion and its aftermath into something colder, stranger, and more destabilizing: a study of power, appetite, performance, and survival that keeps shifting under your feet.
Worth noting
Isabelle Huppert gives the film its steel spine. Michèle is written as a woman who cannot be easily categorized as victim, avenger, or antihero, and the movie is most compelling when it lets that ambiguity breathe. The result is a film that is often funny in the darkest possible way, then suddenly brutal, then oddly intimate.
Bottom line
It’s also a deliberately risky film, and that risk is the point. Some viewers will find its provocations insightful; others will find them infuriating or ethically suspect. Either way, it’s a conversation-starter with real formal control and one of the decade’s most memorable central performances.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Keith (4.5★) · 1755 likes
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,… more
matt lynch (4.5★) · 937 likes
One of cinema's greatest perverts makes his manifesto on guilt and taboo desire.
Aaron (5★) · 785 likes
“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… more