---
title: "Elle"
year: 2016
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/elle"
fi1m_score: 82
critics_score: 81
critics_reviews: 24
published: "2026-09-17T08:28:51.796117+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:38:10.429983+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Elle (2016)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven · 2h 11m · MPA R · Drama, Thriller

**Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 81 from 24 reviews

*In a sentence:* Isabelle Huppert makes everyone else look dangerously unprepared for a conversation

> Paul Verhoeven’s *Elle* is a disturbing, often funny thriller with an exceptional Isabelle Huppert performance. Its elaborate plotting sometimes tries too hard, but we recommend it to those prepared for brutal sexual violence.

## Synopsis

After a rape, Michèle (Isabelle Huppert) tries to keep control of her life while the identity of her attacker remains unknown. Around her are Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), Anna (Anne Consigny) and Richard (Charles Berling), with sexual entanglements and difficult relationships continuing to demand her attention. She responds to danger with mockery and pepper spray, giving little away about how the assault has affected her. Her determination to pursue pleasure and exercise authority unsettles any simple account of what she needs. As she negotiates the people around her, the threat to her safety remains.

## Review

Paul Verhoeven’s *Elle* is a strong, troubling thriller that gives its central woman more freedom than its elaborate plot sometimes allows. After Michèle is raped, we might expect the familiar business of pursuit and punishment. Her continuing appetite for pleasure and control receives just as much attention. This is risky material, and Isabelle Huppert makes it work by refusing to play Michèle as somebody whose behaviour must explain how survivors ought to behave.

We were horrified by the assault. Its brutality makes the subsequent comedy uncomfortable, particularly when the film invites us to enjoy Michèle’s capacity for mockery. The performance does not offer a reassuring change of manner to announce that laughter is now permitted. She can be funny, cruel and hurt without arranging those feelings into separate scenes for our convenience. We are asked to keep watching someone whose response cannot be reduced to the crime committed against her.

Isabelle Huppert is especially good at making authority look like a daily habit. Michèle’s desire to control what other people know about her feels intelligible even when her decisions remain difficult to understand. The pleasure she takes in power comes through as clearly as the effort required to maintain it. There is enough humour in the performance to make her company enjoyable, and enough severity to discourage any wish to be her friend. Her contradictory behaviour never feels like an invitation to stop taking her seriously.

Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography and Laurent Ott’s production design give the social comedy a polish that feels uncomfortable beside the violence. That civilised appearance works because the characters’ manners can remain intact while their behaviour grows ugly. Job ter Burg’s editing keeps the switches between comedy and suspense brisk, denying us much time to settle into either. Anne Dudley’s score helps sustain the threat, although the uncertainty in the central performance is more unsettling than the recognisable thriller cues. The craft supports the changes of tone without making them comfortable.

The weakness lies in David Birke’s screenplay, which sometimes piles complication onto Michèle as though another contradiction will make her more interesting. The tangled relationships are often entertaining, but there are stretches when the plotting seems too pleased with its ability to surprise us. We begin to notice how much has been arranged to keep this woman difficult to explain. Isabelle Huppert does not overplay the material, which helps, but her precision cannot make every development feel equally plausible.

Against the rape-revenge thriller’s usual promise of a satisfying reckoning, the attention paid to Michèle’s continuing social and sexual life is valuable. She is allowed to want things that do not help an audience approve of her. Nothing about those desires makes the assault less violent, and nothing about being assaulted obliges her to become kinder. The film is persuasive when it trusts us to understand that. It becomes harder to defend when another provocation threatens to crowd out the woman we have been watching.

We would not offer this as a reassuring film about surviving violence, and its humour does not soften what is shown. Nor should Michèle be made to stand for anyone beyond herself. See it for Isabelle Huppert, and allow some time afterwards to disagree about the script.

*Fi1m score 82, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics respond warmly to Elle, with praise concentrated on Isabelle Huppert’s performance as a woman whose response to rape resists familiar expectations. The reviews repeatedly credit her precision, humour and complexity with holding together Paul Verhoeven’s shifts between psychological suspense, black comedy and social satire. Most find the film disturbing but also unexpectedly funny, and see its handling of desire, power and victimhood as a substantial challenge to the conventions of the rape-revenge thriller.

The disagreement concerns what those provocations achieve, with a broad positive majority and a small but sharply dissenting minority. The Guardian remains conflicted about the film while admiring Huppert’s resolve and commanding presence. The New Yorker rejects the transgressions as false, arguing that the central character becomes a collection of pathological traits rather than a convincing woman acting on desire; it also finds Huppert’s precise performance less distinctive than most critics do.

### Reviews we read (24)

- **The Times**, Camilla Long (★★★★★): The review praises the film as mad, wild, provocative, funny, dark and determined. It singles out Isabelle Huppert's superb performance as a chilled, sexual, driven woman. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/article/camilla-long-film-review-elle-catfight-dqc2vnwcz)
- **The AV Club**, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (A): The critic calls the film a challenging yet entertaining black comedy that is laugh-out-loud funny and indulges its kinks through a deviously plotted and subversive narrative. It singles out Huppert's marvelous, intuitive performance as one of the best of her career for creating a caustic, contradictory anti-victim who relishes pleasure and power. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/paul-verhoeven-is-back-with-a-vengeance-with-the-corros-1798189435)
- **Empire**, Helen O'Hara (90/100, inferred): The critic highlights Isabelle Huppert's multifaceted, mercurial performance as the key to making the provocative story work, portraying a woman who refuses to be defined or devastated by trauma and takes back agency in surprising ways. It is intensely troubling yet fiercely feminist, shocking, surprisingly funny, and compelling. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/elle-review/)
- **Evening Standard**, David Sexton (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it an unmissable shocker driven by Isabelle Huppert's stupendous, charismatic performance that embodies the entire film, showing a formidable woman who refuses to be a victim or defined by others after a brutal rape. The story surprises and thrills while exploring her strength of will and insolence in a provocative French context. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/elle-film-review-a-shocker-not-to-be-missed-a3680246.html)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (90/100, inferred): Verhoeven's film is a gripping whodunit and wickedly droll comedy of manners that confronts the audience with a brutal assault and then delivers psychological suspense. Isabelle Huppert delivers a masterful, enthralling performance that upholds and improves her reputation. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-elle-review-20161114-story.html)
- **Screen Daily** (90/100, inferred): The critic finds it suspenseful and unsettling from start to finish, an audacious and irony-laced tale with a tour de force performance from Huppert that is just plain fun to watch. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/elle-cannes-review/5103208.article)
- **Slant Magazine**, Diego Semerene (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's bold exploration of the ambivalence of pleasure and desire, noting how it inhabits the maddening contradictions of a woman's response to rape without shame or repression. It singles out Huppert's rigorous, seductive performance and the way the film turns misogyny into a mockery through feminine power and fantasy. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/elle/)
- **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (Critic's Pick): The film is a masterpiece of suave perversity that scrambles assumptions about its central rape-revenge premise through genre shifts and ambiguity. Isabelle Huppert's astonishing performance as the protagonist provides the film's fascination and coherence. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/movies/elle-review-isabelle-huppert.html)
- **Total Film** (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert as being at the top of their game in a complex film that sidesteps every cliché of the rape-revenge genre, handling its black comedy, tortuous relationships, and fearless central performance with skill. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/elle-review/)
- **Variety** (90/100, inferred): High-risk material yields unexpected rewards in this remarkable rape-revenge drama, a possible career high for Verhoeven that is knowingly incendiary but remarkably cool-headed. It centers on another of Isabelle Huppert's staggering psychological dissections in a complex, compassionate, often corrosively funny examination. [Read](https://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/elle-review-1201780097/)
- **Film Comment**, Dennis Lim (85/100, inferred): Elle emerged as an unlikely press favorite at Cannes, a wry and playful comedy of manners about a woman’s unusual response to rape. Huppert’s impish performance keeps the heroine’s motivations a source of mystery and comedy; the film is also Verhoeven’s most tender. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/cannes-2016-elle-staying-vertical-well-told-tale/)
- **Time Out**, Catherine Bray (85/100, inferred): The critic describes it as the most Verhoeveny film yet for its button-pushing transgression and delight in risky territory, highlighting Isabelle Huppert's fierce, multifaceted performance as the standout element. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/elle-1)
- **Little White Lies**, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (4/4/5): The critic calls it a sly, caustic social critique that teases the viewer with every double-edged frame, noting that Huppert and Verhoeven reunite to potent effect in this provocative yet substantive work. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/elle)
- **Financial Times**, Nigel Andrews (70/100, inferred): Verhoeven stress-tests political correctness by blending rape and blithe amorality in a tale of sex, lies and video games. The laughs come from the contradiction between outward propriety and inner animalism. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/c98bdab4-04ba-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9)
- **Sight and Sound**, Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López (70/100, inferred): The critic sees the film as far deeper and more disquieting than a standard rape-revenge thriller, praising its complex psychological portrait of Michèle and Verhoeven's invitation to enjoy her morally dubious behaviour. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-elle-far-deeper-more-disquieting-than-rape-revenge-thriller)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Jordan Mintzer (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a tastefully twisted mid-to-late-life crisis thriller that is both lasciviously dark and rebelliously light on its feet. It highlights Isabelle Huppert's performance as a woman who fights back with authority, mockery, and pepper spray in a perverse story of resilience and freedom. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/elle-cannes-review-896270/)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (50/100, inferred): The critic remains conflicted about the film overall but is in awe of Isabelle Huppert's performance as Michèle. They single out her steely resolve and indomitable presence as making her the author of her own story. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/12/elle-review-paul-verhoeven-isabelle-huppert)
- **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (30/100, inferred): The film presents phony sexual transgressions that muddy rather than challenge conventions, turning its protagonist into an anecdotal pathological figure rather than a strong woman acting on desire. Huppert's performance is precise but not distinctive. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-phony-sexual-transgressions-of-paul-verhoevens-elle)
- **Den of Geek**, Ryan Lambie (5 out of 5): The critic calls it one of Verhoeven’s very best: darkly unsettling, blackly funny and thought-provoking. Isabelle Huppert delivers a peerless, fiercely intelligent performance as the complex central character who refuses to behave as society expects. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/elle-review-2/)
- **HeyUGuys**, Luke Channell (90/100, inferred): Verhoeven returns with a genre-bending, daringly original film that is a multi-faceted, endlessly engaging, masterful success. The tonal balancing act is held together by a dazzling, powerhouse performance from Isabelle Huppert. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/elle-review/)
- **Collider**, Phil Brown (B+): The critic praises the film's provocative dark comedy and complex thriller elements while noting its divisive nature. They single out Isabelle Huppert's remarkable, complex performance as the standout element that grounds the story. [Read](https://collider.com/elle-review/)
- **The Skinny**, Ian Mantgani (★★★★): Huppert dominates this complex, multi-toned thriller that winds through psychological suspense, black comedy and lifestyle drama. It is a study of victimhood and strength without sentimentality, and a corker. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/festivals/uk-festivals/film/lff-2016-elle)
- **The Wrap**, Sam Fragoso (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a deeply disturbing yet engrossing work that probes power dynamics and retribution through its provocative premise. Huppert's layered, assured performance as the resilient survivor who refuses to be defined by victimhood is singled out as the standout element. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/elle-review-isabelle-huppert/)
- **The Playlist**, Jessica Kiang (70/100, inferred): Verhoeven has made a comedy about rape and a perverse comment on female sexuality and patriarchy that is queasily hilarious and breathtakingly defiant. The incredible, irreplaceable central performance from Isabelle Huppert makes the mass of contradictions cohere. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/cannes-review-paul-verhoevens-rivetingly-unsavory-fearless-and-witty-elle-with-isabelle-huppert-20160521/)

## Details

- **Director:** Paul Verhoeven
- **Director:** Paul Verhoeven
- **Screenplay:** David Birke
- **Novel:** Philippe Djian
- **Cinematography:** Stéphane Fontaine
- **Editor:** Job ter Burg
- **Music:** Anne Dudley
- **Production design:** Laurent Ott
- **Costume design:** Nathalie Raoul
- **Producer:** Michel Merkt, Saïd Ben Saïd
- **Cast:** Isabelle Huppert as Michèle; Laurent Lafitte as Patrick; Anne Consigny as Anna; Charles Berling as Richard; Virginie Efira as Rebecca; Judith Magre as Irène; Christian Berkel as Robert; Jonas Bloquet as Vincent
- **Runtime:** 2h 11m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 11 November 2016
- **Genres:** Drama, Thriller
- **Budget:** $10 million
- **Box office:** $2 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEnhx82_In4

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Apple TV: buy $12.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $12.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, HK, HU, ID, IN, IT, JP, KR, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, SE, SG, TH, UA, US, VN. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2017: Best Actress (nominated)
- César Award for Best Actress 2017: César Award for Best Actress (nominated)
- International Submission to the Academy Awards 2017: International Submission to the Academy Awards (nominated)
- European Film Award for Best Actress 2016: European Film Award for Best Actress (nominated)
- European Film Award for Best Director 2016: European Film Award for Best Director (nominated)
- European Film Award for Best Film 2016: European Film Award for Best Film (nominated)

## If you liked this

- *The Piano Teacher* (2001): Another unsettling Isabelle Huppert performance, with desire examined without much reassurance
- *La Cérémonie* (1995): Domestic politeness conceals hostility in a thriller that takes class seriously
- *The Headless Woman* (2008): A woman’s uncertain recollection turns ordinary encounters into sources of mounting unease
- *The Handmaiden* (2016), Fi1m 85: Sex, deception and shifting power, with more pleasure in the plotting — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-handmaiden.md)
- *In the Cut* (2003): A murder investigation entangles desire and fear without making either comfortable

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/elle