Every new Paul Verhoeven movie is a special occasion! (Though I must admit, I didn't get to see his previous film 'Tricked', which didn't play in my market.) The director of such Dutch classics as 'The Fourth Man' and 'Black Book', not to mention a couple of American movies, Verhoeven knows his way around a movie camera and a story structure. His latest is the French movie 'Elle'.

Elle is a comedy of manners. Or perhaps more accurately, Elle is a violent sexual assault mystery psychodrama of manners, with a couple of good laughs. Isabelle Huppert is the tour de force that Elle orbits around, without her gravity all the other characters will spin off into the void. It's a carnival dark ride into the horror that lies beneath the ever so thin veneer of civil society. And Elle knows when to get off. *A+*

That typical overrated French movie that always ends up getting random awards buzz for some reason, except decidedly more trashy, this is literally only worth seeing for a good (if not year-best) performance from Isabelle Huppert. The rest is predictable and dull which is surprising considering how ridiculous some of the plot twists are. I hated every single character and didn't care about anything that was going on at the end. Didn't like this one at all. C

It's okay to admit sometimes that you did not understand a film or its intentions.

I got it, it was just dumb.

It was a lot of things and it certainly is divise. But dumb ain't one of them. It is satire. Great satire on gender politics.

An interesting watch for sure. Not sure I get the Huppert awards buzz but she was good.

**** / ***** (B)

This is not Paul Verhoeven movie. This is Isabelle Huppert's solo show. She ran away with the whole movie. She's mesmerizing to watch. You can't keep your eyes off her and her intricate character. Lots of thing happen in this one, but none is more important than each and every move on Huppert's face and her "Ah's/Oh's".

The movie is a smart (very) dark comedy about life.

A tight psychological drama. Meaningful character development is what makes this film interesting. During the film, our protagonist Michele(Isabelle Huppert) is sexually assaulted in her house by a masked intruder, multiple times. We learn as the film progresses that a traumatic childhood experience involving her father contributes to her stoic response to the assaults and her distrust of the police and the media (or people in general). The nature of the "assaults" (used loosely here) changes as Michele finds out who did them and she and the assaulter interact and develop a tacit relationship. The complexity of the character alone makes Huppert's performance awards-worthy. The film is pretty good at tying up loose ends without being too obvious.

I need a second viewing to get more understanding of the film.

Isabelle Huppert is magnetic in here but I didn't like the final twist movie tries to bring. I would have loved that it wasn't trying to be smart enough. The first half was very interesting but I found the middle act boring, once the reveal happens it becomes interesting and there are some really tense scenes. I just didn't love the ending as much as others.

C+