Film Elle

(Paul Verhoeven, 2016) Film4, 12.50am

Veteran transatlantic controversialist Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct) staged a triumphant European comeback with this twisty French psychological thriller. Isabelle Huppert plays Michèle, the head of a video game company, who is raped but chooses not to report the crime. As the mystery of her personality unfolds, the bourgeois world she inhabits is picked apart. This is a rare film where the star can claim auteur status as much as the director, and Huppert has never been so coolly mercurial – the scene where Michèle calmly narrates the nightmarish secret of her childhood is arguably the most quintessentially Huppertian moment of her career. Hugely entertaining, audaciously confrontational.