Elle [Blu-ray] [2017]

Isabelle is really superb, enjoyable, dazzling, congenial, funny and so on. As good as Benedetta or even slightly better in his own way. Paul Verhoeven is a master in the power of suggestion.

This is a superb film. If I could give it more than 5 stars I would.Isabelle Huppert's performance is mesmerising, although there is wonderful support from all the cast.She is raped at the very start of the film, but instead of withdrawing, she tries to track down her attacker. This is a thriller utterly uncompromising in its portrayal of sex, but without ever being gratuitously sleazy.She plays the boss of a film company producing animated videos, but that is just a framework for her more personal life.Deservedly she won a Golden Globe for her performance (2017) and was nominated for an Oscar Best Actress. I haven't yet seen the competitive performances from actors like Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman, but I doubt whether they could hold a candle to the intensity of Huppert's. (It was the year when La La Land swept the Oscars so Emma Stone won)

Being a big fan of Isabelle Huppert and Virginie Efria, I couldn't wait to see this film. Michèle (Huppert) in her cold manner with family members (son, mother, convict father, ex-husband) and so-called friends didn't get much sympathy from me. She seemed to have more empathy for her cat, an injured bird and her nasty assailant. Rebecca (Efria) was such a weak overly religious character unlike the strong character she has portrayed in other films. Watching the film left me feeling disappointed as it wasn't the "electrifying... utterly gripping" film I had hoped to see when I purchased it. I have been left confused not knowing what to make of it. But it's worth watching even just to see one of France's top actresses in a very bizarre role

Isabelle Huppert is at her finest in this stylish, engaging, thoroughly gripping - but quite frankly enjoyably bizarre -multi layered neo noir.Unsettling at times but engaging nonetheless, with every self serving character devoid of any redeeming features.I loved to hate each and every one of them!No spoilers, but it was the neighbour's wife's statement to Elle (as she was packing to move house) that really slapped me across the face and put my jaw on the floor...

The setting is French urban chic. The central character plus friend are both bosses of their video-gaming company. Female leadership and therefore the drive to characterization is from that sex. The protagonist is dealing with various levels of complicated relationships: with her son, with her mother, with her ex-husband, with her lover, and with the desired focus on the particular game being developed. In that context, the unfolding story is how she responds to being raped; violent in itself. It's the unfolding twists - 'twisted even' reactions that take one's breath away. There is a deep psychological dimension. For some who might explore more, read 'Whose Been Sleeping in Your Head'.

I was gripped from start to finishReservations? Very French in that we move to another scene before we can digest what we've just watched, (not to mention the tolerant attitude to infidelity). The rapist's disguise was more than a touch flimsy. I was not convinced the victim wouldn't have gone to the police.But Isabelle Huppert was brilliant, as was her (cuckolded) close friend, and the religious neighbour.And there was suspense too. Plus food for thought.Loved it.

Very good

Huppert plays the head of a video game software development company who gets raped by an unknown assailant early on in the film. She then starts to suspect some of her employees as the video game they are currently working on is quite violent as she oddly decides not to call the police. Then we learn her father is an incarcerated serial killer, her mother an old cougar messing around with a much younger man and other distracting nonsense. In between, Huppert is having an affair with her best friend's husband as the film ambles along and she tries to discover who the culprit is. Later in the film she does and then it gets really unbelievable and silly as she again does not report him to the police but tolerates it and to a certain point encourages this abnormal behaviour. Overall, it is just about watchable nonsense that just escapes being a one star.