Elle (Paul Verhoeven): Reviews from the Curaçao Film Festival 2017 #CIFFR

Elle, Paul Verhoeven, 2016

Friday, April 7th, 2017, 21:15

Oh, how I hated this one. I should have known; Mr. Verhoeven and I rarely see eye to misogynous, chauvinistic eye. This film is, quite bluntly, about a woman who gets raped and enjoys it. Yes: enjoys it. The rape, in fact, turns her on so much that she deliberately goes after the rapist—not to exact vengeance, mind you (or castrate him, or cut his throat in the middle of the night), but to get raped again. And again.

And the idiot the director has the balls to call it a film about female empowerment. I suppose that, in Mr. Verhoeven's world, the only power women need to aspire to is that of loving their abusers.

The female lead, Isabelle Huppert, won Best Actress at the Golden Globes last year. And well deserved. She managed to translate into reality the twisted, masturbatory fantasies inside the cesspool that must be Verhoeven's head.

Unless you're looking to be profoundly disgusted—as if the world weren't offering enough of that already—do yourself a favor and skip this one.