Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

I want Elle to win an Oscar – but I also wish it hadn’t been made

Is it possible simultaneously to want a film to win an Oscar and to wish it hadn’t been made? That’s how confused I felt after seeing Elle with Isabelle Huppert – a woman for whom the adjective hard-boiled (in a French way) doesn’t even come close to her unvarying self-possession. Elle, directed by Paul Verhoeven, is about rape, violent rape, and the aftermath of rape, but this is as odd a depiction of victimhood as you can get.

Huppert – Michèle Leblanc in the movie – is plainly brutalised by a sudden attack in her home by a masked intruder, in a wetsuit, who hits her repeatedly to subjugate her – every woman’s worst nightmare. Hearing the attack off camera over the opening credits, you think that’s it, the rape is out of the way, thank God. Oh no it isn’t.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, the problem with the film is that Huppert’s reactions are all wrong. Or wrong from where I’m at. She doesn’t go to the police – because of the way they behaved when she was a child and her father was arrested for unspeakable crimes of his own (men really don’t come out of this well). That’s bad. But reading reviews of the film, you might think that the hunted turns hunter and that she tracks down her rapist and plays mind games with him. Well no, actually. She does identify her rapist, and… sees him again and again, socially, and when she needs help.

Maybe it’s different in the novel on which the film is based: Philippe Djian’s Oh…, published in 2012. Maybe the social encounters aren’t complicity with the rapist so much as some sort of attempt to gain the upper hand through engagement, but the relationship is, as she acknowledges eventually, ‘twisted’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in