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****
Dir: Paul Verhoeven (18, 130 mins)
Provocative and disturbing, the director of tabloid baiting hits Basic Instinct and Showgirls, giddying violent adventures Starship Troopers and Total Recall returns with his most uncomfortable film to date. Isabelle Huppert is superb as an icy Paris video games executive, whose top selling game has such queasy highlights as orc rape. When she herself is assaulted and raped, she does not take the obvious route for revenge. Full of twists and turns with Verhoeven delighting in the shifts from horror to light comedy, dinner parties to assaults, Elle is a pressure cooker of a film. Huppert’s performance manages to anchor some of the excesses as she’s revealed to be the daughter of a serial killer and tries to get on with the day to day business of living, with the shadow of her assault always in the corner. Elle raises many problematic questions and answers few of them, how complicit is society in the rape of women, and is Huppert’s character empowered or not? Squirm inducing stuff, it also works as a thriller of sorts, maniacally presented by Verhoeven. It enrages and challenges the viewer in ways films don’t normally do and is guaranteed to provoke vigorous debate in its angry wake.
Opens March 10