The fall and winter is going to get very repetitive if we keep mentioning how competitive the Best Actress race is this year (too late), so how about we use this opportunity to remind you that Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” needs to be on your must-see list?
READ MORE: New Trailer For Paul Verhoeven’s Provocative ‘Elle’ Starring Isabelle Huppert
Verhoeven’s late-career comeback finds Isabelle Huppert playing Michèle Leblanc, the head of a video game company who is attacked and raped in her home by an unknown assailant. She doesn’t report this to the police, but instead attempts to (foolishly or not) discover who this intruder is on her own.
In a nearly 2-and-a-half minute long scene released today by U.S. distributor Sony Pictures Classics, we find Michèle chatting with her neighbor Patrick (Laurent Lafitte) at a dinner party in her home. Perhaps having a bit too much to drink she bluntly talks about the atrocities her father committed that have haunted her family for years. Huppert is simply superb here and the clip is just one reason she might end up in the Best Actress five (oh, wait we said we wouldn’t talk about that would we?).
The thriller was a massive surprise at Cannes last May and arguably could have landed a jury prize if it wasn’t the last film to premiere at the festival (although they gave Xavier Dolan’s terrible “It’s Only The End of the World” the Grand Prize so perhaps that’s putting too much faith in George Miller’s jury). Needless to say, “Elle” is still one of the best-reviewed films of the year currently with an 86 on Metacritic and an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and as The Playlist’s own Jessica Kiang noted, “the glee with which Verhoeven and Huppert openly, even playfully, defy any concession to cultural correctness is breathtaking.” Yep, it’s something.
Check out the clip below and see for yourself. “Elle” opens in New York on Nov. 11 and Los Angeles Nov. 16.
