‘Elle’: Once assaulted, Isabelle Huppert’s exec is no victim

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Isabelle Huppert in “Elle.” | Sony Pictures Classics

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven proved to be spectacularly adept at shocking audiences.

For Verhoeven, great big blood-and-guts sagas “Robocop” (1987) and “Total Recall” (1990) raised the bar on just how grisly mainstream cinema could get while still remaining packed full of ideas. Likewise, divisive offerings like “Basic Instinct” (1992) showed that he was never afraid to get sexually explicit in his storytelling.

It turns out that time has done nothing to dull Verhoeven’s gift for provocation. If anything, his decades of experience on both sides of the Atlantic have sharpened his skills to a razor’s edge.

Take “Elle,” his latest film. Verhoeven is able to deliver all of the thrills and suspense of his earlier work, but now he generates it through character interaction, internal conflict and a web of human drama.

“Elle” still has raw brutality to spare, but the filmmaker is able to cleverly elicit shocks and a few nervous laughs from just a look, a line or a character revelation.

Based on the novel “Oh …” by Philippe Djian, this is the story of Michele, a high-powered executive in the video game industry navigating a sea of dramas and suspicions after being savagely raped. Verhoeven and screenwriter David Birke don’t pull any punches, and there are sequences of sexual violence that could be too much for many viewers.

But star Isabelle Huppert never allows Michele to be seen as a victim. The character deals with a lifetime worth of pain and carries herself with steely determination, intelligence, even a sly playfulness that itself becomes disturbing.

Huppert’s performance is a wicked blend of naked vulnerability and unknowable depth, becoming a vital anchor for the film. Birke’s screenplay nearly collapses under its own weight at times, piling on enough familial subplots for a few seasons of television.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when the film asks viewers to keep track of threads including (but not limited to): Michele’s son possibly being tricked into raising someone else’s child, Michele’s mother falling in love with a much younger man, Michele’s ex-husband’s anxiety over his faltering literary career and Michele being sexually harassed at work.

Those subplots, and several others, bloat the film to well over two hours and rob it of some raw impact.

But there are sequences, like a Christmas dinner party, where Verhoeven brings everything together into something special and subtly devastating, as he gracefully forces all of his story threads together.

Unlike Verhoeven’s best-known work, “Elle” doesn’t have a terribly high body count, but it still possesses emotional brutality, driven by a performance from Huppert that is explosive.

Alex Biese, USA TODAY Network

Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by David Birke, based on the novel “Oh …” by Philippe Djian. Rated R (for violence involving sexual assault, disturbing sexual content, some grisly images, brief graphic nudity, and language). In French with English subtitles. Running time: 131 minutes. Opens Friday at Landmark Century Centre.

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