Isabelle Huppert in Elle

Trigger Warning: Rape Story Told by Men

Elle. WTF?

Can I just stop there? I don't know what to do with this movie.

Paul Verhoeven made a film about a woman who gets raped. But this woman is Elle and she is different. Her father was a sociopath serial killer and so maybe she has problems, too? Or maybe she is just another strong woman who gets called a bitch at work? Maybe she is cold and heartless? Or maybe she is just confident and knows what she wants?

Maybe this film is really feminist? But then why does it make me so uncomfortable?

The rape is brutal. And so is the violent sex that later becomes consensual. The one thing I can say in defense of this film is that they never romanticize these scenes. They aren't shot to be sexy, thank goodness. They are fairly disturbing and mostly offered without a defined point of view. 

What I don't like about the film is watching a story about rape and sex that is told by a male director, with three male writers, a male cinematographer, a male editor and based on a book by a male author. I think it is time we took the depiction of rape in film seriously, and that has to mean that we include women's points of view in how these stories are told. Maybe each of these men is close to a woman who has been a victim to male brutality and made it out of a deep sense of activism? I know I should leave space for that, but also, I just don't buy it.

I could not help several times during the film imagining three or four white men having coffee and one of them saying, "But what if she kind of likes the rape?" And then I want to vomit. 

While the film making was sound and the story did hold some interest, I would prefer we don't see any more films like this. Thank you.