Rape, revenge and a woman to love or loathe

NOT many women have received a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards for a performance in a foreign language film. Only two have gone on to lift the Oscar: Sophia Loren in 1962 and Marion Cotillard in 2008.

So it is testament to Isabelle Huppert’s performance in Elle that she was not only a nominee this year, but a viable rival to eventual winner Emma Stone.

Huppert (pictured) gives a brilliant but disturbing portrayal of a woman who, in the opening scene, is raped by a masked man on the parquet floor of her Paris apartment.

This is Michele Leblanc, well-heeled boss of a video games company, a tough divorcee whose composed demeanour seems barely ruffled by the attack.

Her equilibrium perplexes and challenges us. Rape in the movies, as in the real world, tends to leave lives shattered. But Michele’s still seems together. The only threats to her sangfroid come from her ineffectual son, who has a domineering, pregnant girlfriend, and her embarrassing mother, who is planning to marry her gigolo boyfriend. Then, another threat materialises: a series of sinister texts from the unknown rapist. By now, we have learnt something else about Michele — she is the daughter of one of France’s most notorious serial killers, still languishing in jail. So, there is a psychological web to unravel.

But director Paul Verhoeven, showing a mastery of tension that recalls one of his best films, Basic Instinct (1992), never overlooks the most heartthumping question: who is the assailant? Her former husband? Her lover? An employee? The neighbour? A stranger? And, once she discovers his identity, how will she get even?

Verhoeven and his screenwriter David Birke, working from a novel by Philipe Djian, cleverly keep us from wholly rooting for Michele, even as we yearn for revenge. Her bestselling video game features a nasty rape scenario, and she is brazenly having an affair with the husband of her business partner and best friend. She is not a likeable woman. But there is a further layer of dubious morality I found uncomfortable. Elle has been hailed as a feminist story of female empowerment in a male-dominated world, but its particular attitude to rape seems to me more of a male than a female fantasy. It has also been described as a comedy, but I can’t say I found it even slightly amusing. Its one overt stab at humour — when Michele’s son doesn’t realise his girlfriend’s black baby might not be his — is discordantly silly. Yet there can be no denying Elle is intriguing and gripping. And the wonderful Huppert on top form is recommendation enough.