Elle

As I was watching this film, I felt as though this was made for an American Gaze, like a De Palma film set abroad. So, I was unsurprised when I discovered that Paul Verhoeven of Basic Instinct fame directed this film, and it was initially intended for an American lead actress alongside an American setting. Though pretty tame for a revenge psychosexual French thriller, it came a bit too late for the political climate of today’s American cinema. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but find myself engrossed and really drawn to the macabre story. The movie begins immediately with a woman being brutally attacked and assaulted by a masked intruder inside her home. After the assault she cleans up the mess—broken shards from a fallen vase—that was made while she was struggling against her attacker. She takes a bath and meets with her ingrate son. This is Michelle LeBlanc, played with remarkable prowess by Isabelle Huppert.

  

Michelle is a mother, an ex-wife, and a CEO but also an unusual choice of protagonist for a rape-revenge feature, not just in the stoic way she reacts to the assault but also because of her particularly prickly character traits and because of the violent past that might hint at there being a secret darkness inside of her. But like they say: there is no such thing as a perfect victim.

 

Michelle endures horrific slings and arrows with a seasoned deftness and a Teflon exterior. Troubles seem to hardly rattle her. But she is still unnerved and angered by the attack as anyone would be. She envisions a redo where instead of being violated by her attacker she bashes his head in repeatedly with the vase. 

  

Her character's handling of adverse circumstances has been dubbed masculine by some critics. I found this interesting since there’s something about Elle that reminds me of an old-school horror flick that’s been turned on its head. In those movies, the protagonist is often a virginal girl( In Elle it’s subverted, Michelle is a middle-aged adulteress) and the heroine must take on masculine traits and symbols to defeat her monster. But in Elle, her monster is defeated in a submissive, ‘feminine’ way. As though Michelle had to reject the manly and stoic defense mechanism that she built to protect her from audacious men in order for her to destroy the most brazen, monstrous man she’s ever encountered.

 

When her attacker makes another attempt later in the film, she does manage to thwart him by spearing a piece of glass through his hand. He is so distracted from the pain, that Michele manages to remove the ski mask and finds herself staring into the face of her attractive next-door neighbor. Flummoxed and angered, she drives him out.

 

Michelle has been plagued by the derision of strangers and the crimes of familiar men, since the inciting moment in her childhood when her father committed a string of murders in their neighborhood and may or may not have encouraged Michele to aid him in those crimes.

 

In a way, Michelle seems to be more bothered by her connection to her father than her assault. The film tries to keep it ambiguous as to whether she was an equally culpable participant in the murders like her father, but it seems to me that whatever ignorant enjoyment she might have taken, is irrelevant; she was a child. She was under the authority of someone who was meant to protect her, who empowered her to submit to his tainted desires. So, of course, she never forgives him for this. For taking advantage of a daughter’s natural desire to be subservient to her father and using it for something abhorrent and wrong. It’s twisted! Twisted is also the word Michele uses to describe what has existed between her and her neighbor Patrick AKA, the masked rapist. Going from a not-so-innocent crush and attraction for a seemingly affable happily married man to a strange sadomasochistic cat and mouse encounter in his basement.

 

He tries to assault her a third time and is this time successful, but it is the circumstances that enable this act of violence that makes the question of consent more nebulous. It’s unclear why Michelle didn’t report Patrick immediately and even seems to permit his violent fantasies further. Perhaps the frustrations in her life have driven her to feel that by engaging in this twisted affair, she is demonstrating an act of deference and strength. Or perhaps like Patrick, victimizing herself is in her nature, as rape is in his, and she cannot help but make herself both the subject and co-author of her trauma. Regardless, of what the true story is. In the end, she does choose the truth, though. This truth is achieved under the guise of a lie. As with most disadvantaged groups, women seldom have the luxury of achieving justice through a straight path. Even women who are also chic Parisian CEOs.