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Elle

Play trailer 2:07 Poster for Elle R 2016 2h 11m Mystery & Thriller Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
91% Tomatometer 245 Reviews 73% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
The successful CEO (Isabelle Huppert) of a video game company tries to learn the identity of the man who raped her.
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Elle

Elle

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Critics Consensus

Elle finds director Paul Verhoeven operating at peak power -- and benefiting from a typically outstanding performance from Isabelle Huppert in the central role.

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Critics Reviews

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Cate Young Bitch Media 03/08/2021
The rape scenes are neither gratuitous nor lingered upon. Go to Full Review
Namrata Joshi The Hindu 07/24/2018
...twisted, transgressive, disturbing, and strangely liberating and cathartic. Go to Full Review
Adam Nayman Cinema Scope 09/28/2017
On the level of craft, Elle is excellent. Go to Full Review
Adrienne McIlvaine Vague Visages 02/06/2024
Elle is a demented Rorschach test of the highest degree. Go to Full Review
Vadim Rizov Filmmaker Magazine 01/17/2023
...a trifle underwhelming. It is, nonetheless, very nice to hear from Verhoeven again, and while it’d be wrong to say the film is a comedy — it’s fundamentally a very serious proposition — it’s often a very funny movie... Go to Full Review
Brian T. Carney Washington Blade 12/21/2022
Isabelle Huppert [gives] a mesmerizing performance in Paul Verhoeven’s provocative Elle. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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noa r 04/10/2024 started well. though once all was revealed, it wasn't exactly what i was in the mood for and found it to be very weird. i was confused on what the message of the story was. was it a character study? just a erotic thriller? isabelle huppert is still able to steal the screen though. superb performance! See more Alec B 12/14/2023 Like all of Verhoeven's best films, "Elle" is transgressive and constantly defies expectations. It's a unique work, one that's very much a product of the current culture and a rebellion against it. Huppert's performance deserves to be studied for years to come. See more Danielle T 10/17/2023 Avec cette histoire d'une femme qui, après avoir été violée chez elle, recherche son agresseur plutôt que d'aller à la police, le nouveau film de Paul Verhoeven est tout sauf un banal récit de vengeance. Sobre en apparence, la mise en scène, à l'instar de la protagoniste, ne dévoile que graduellement son infinie complexité. Les retournements de situation abondent, ceux-ci ouvrant systématiquement sur davantage d'ambiguïtés dans la personnalité d'une héroïne fabuleusement atypique. D'un détachement inquiétant, Isabelle Huppert rend Michèle plus difficile à déchiffrer encore que ses autres personnages aux tendances sociopathes vus dans Violette Nozière et Merci pour le chocolat, de Claude Chabrol, et aussi dans La pianiste, de Michael Haneke. Il s'agit, à n'en pas douter, d'une rencontre au sommet. See more Aldis H 10/09/2023 If you accuse me of not getting this oeuvre at all, you would be correct. Do the French like this? It's 100% morally bereft, and it's all a big joke and who cares? See more Georgan G 06/30/2023 This movie is not for a general audience. It's a slick version of open relationships, and tastes in the bedroom that are for the BDSM crowd. The line between actual abuse and consensual role play is explored. See more Dave S 02/25/2023 In a nutshell, Paul Verhoeven's Elle is a film about tortured souls. The tortured soul at the center of the movie is Elle (Isabelle Huppert), a woman whose father was a mass murderer, who finds herself trying to come to terms with and recover from a brutal rape, desperate to determine the identity of her assailant. While the standard course of action would be to make Elle a sympathetic character, Verhoeven effectively turns the tables and reveals her to be a somewhat ruthless character, seemingly bereft of morals, at one point demanding that one of her employees removes his pants to see if she recognizes his penis as that of the rapist's. Despite the fact that the movie feels like it meanders at times, it is an interesting psychological study of a woman in crisis, buoyed by yet another stellar performance from Huppert. See more Read all reviews
Elle

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Movie Info

Synopsis The successful CEO (Isabelle Huppert) of a video game company tries to learn the identity of the man who raped her.
Director
Paul Verhoeven
Producer
Saïd Ben Saïd, Michel Merkt
Screenwriter
David Birke, Philippe Djian
Distributor
Sony Pictures Classics
Production Co
Twenty Twenty Vision Filmproduktion, Entre Chien et Loup, France 2 Cinéma, SBS Productions
Rating
R (Disturbing Sexual Content|Brief Graphic Nudity|Violence|Language|Sexual Assault|Some Grisly Images)
Genre
Mystery & Thriller, Drama
Original Language
French (France)
Release Date (Theaters)
Nov 11, 2016, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 14, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA)
$2.3M
Runtime
2h 11m
Sound Mix
Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio
Digital 2.39:1
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