CIFF – Elle

This film will be released in November so I do not want to give any spoilers here.  Suffice to say I loved the film.  It had the right mix of everything.  Isabelle Huppert is wonderful;  the camerawork and lighting are superb; the story has the right mix of black comedy, drama, sex, noir, suspense and more.  Paul Verhoeven has reached a new level.

Director Paul  Verhoeven called the film a “noir thriller” that mixed genres. “There’s an enormous amount of ambiguity, gaps that are in the narrative on purpose for the audience to fill in,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to fill them in “in a Freudian way.”  Ms Huppert disputes  most  critics description of the film as a “rape revenge”.  She says audiences should look at it as a fantasy.  “The story shouldn’t be taken as a realistic story,” she said at a Cannes press conference. “It’s not a statement about a woman being raped and accepting her rapist, that’s not what it’s about. It should be taken as more of a fantasy. The fantasy is within yourself but it’s not necessarily something that you want to happen.”

A MUST SEE!

I will write more after the official U.S. release.