Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016)

Isabelle Huppert, the head of a video game company, is abruptly raped by a masked assailant in her home and subsequently carries on outwardly as if nothing had happened, to the concern of her friends, while simultaneously setting about trying to establish the man's identity. She doesn't even report the crime due to having no faith in the police after the way they and the media dealt with her as a child when her father was revealed as a mass murderer. Meanwhile, she continues to have her own brazen affair with her best friend's husband.
So, what we have here is every conceivable foul aspect of human nature, tucked away behind a prim middle-class facade, and we're meant to wring insight out of it, which is what most critics seem to have been seduced into doing, seeing Huppert's character as an unconventionally strong and empowering response to the rape scenario. This is may be former blockbuster director Verhoeven's work, but it's an über-French arthouse view of the world, revolving around dinner parties, property and affairs, with Huppert a borderline sociopath (even more so than usual, and God knows she's got plenty of previous for cold, sexually dysfunctional personae) rather than someone truly strong at its centre, all the supporting cast self-centred pricks, all the sex loveless and character motivations routinely completely illogical. There's nothing to learn here, and only a morbid fascination with what the next lateral step in the plot would be kept me watching.

4/10