This is a review of Elle (2016)
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10 March
This is a review of Elle (2016)
Prelude :
The beauty of cinema can also be a film’s bane, in that, just as one creates the film for one’s self as one watches (which, frankly, one just does not with a play – or a symphony, or painting), and then in one’s mind afterwards : one may need a re-examination of what happened at Point A (and / or what it may have meant), because, seen from Point B (and Point C), what one thought then does not fit, or poses questions…
With a review such as this one, begun on the day of release and worked on amongst other things, time, and over-recreating the film, seem to have taken one too far off course (just now - hence this note) : the film as a whole, and the much more varied aspects of Isabelle Huppert’s role of Michèle, now seem like the coast-line, seen through a telescope, because matters of navigation have taken on an unhelpful life of their own, with one's not consulting the charts, but puzzling over, and cogitating, items noted and brought into the cabin at the time.
Yet, partly, even that would-be poetic description avoids the truth that, when generally trying to make reviews that are no more ‘spoilery’ than a trailer (whatever use a trailer is to someone who wants to watch a film), and by discussing and trying to give a flavour of the film (rather than reciting – an interpretation of – what happens in it), one just cannot be too specific about some things : here, exactly how Michèle’s life fits into that of the others whom we see, and ending up, in what has been said, omitting to be more rounded.
Well, you know I've got me an imaginary friend
And it's his daydreams they buy in the end
He won't let me break, he won't let me bend
He puts it all together and I just press send
And he's a shadow behind me in the light
And he takes me walking in the park at night
He makes me do something wrong,
Do something right
And disappears before the morning
Quoted, with kind permission of Ezio Lunedei (@eziolunedei)
'The further we stretch' ~ Ezio [Black Boots on Latin Feet (1995)]
During pre-festival drinks one Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest), and talking about Lars von Trier (and where he has been since Breaking the Waves (1996)), it was remarked – to someone likely to be in the know – that von Trier appears to have been working his way through DSM-IV. (Or DSM-V, as he remarked, since he was in the know, and the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual controversially stood about to be adopted [an article for Mad in America writes 'How Reliable is the DSM-5 ?'].)
Here, we are in a different territory, more as where - in adapting Michel Houllebecq’s novel - Atomised (2006) gives us a generalized sense of the formative parental relationships. Likewise, with the young protagonists of Jeune et Jolie (2013), or, also directed by François Ozon, In the House (Dans la maison) (2012), with Isabelle (Marine Vacth) and Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer), respectively, both doing what they can, because they can : when Isabelle is asked for a reason, by her mother, for setting herself up as a sex worker, she provides a sufficient reason for this purpose, but to make money does not account for why she did this. (In this respect, the closest parallel with Michael Haneke's films - please see below - is in the chilling mood of The White Ribbon (2009).)
Three images from The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte), and its shoot
On the level of the film's ambit, and how it communicates to us the different places where it resides, Elle has something in common with Eastern Boys (2013). However, although the latter - though to very little effect (other than adding variety to the changing dominant scene ?) - evokes a merging of the power-play of the everyday world with that of gaming and gamers, Elle (2016) actually does it. Regarding the 'shop of horrors' shown in the still below (which clearly equates to an armoury, or other repository, for one's character to select weaponry in a game - and which may even have equipped her attacker, with the hood, and some sort of special codpiece ?), one is almost in two minds whether, when someone is feeling threatened to the extent of buying equipment, that disturbing state of mind is being matched by another one, in having such a clear sense of contemplating what to buy, and to achieve what end :
As to Michèle’s purchases, and how we see them used (and notably not used again), there must be some ambiguity whether – however they might have been employed – she was thinking, as in a game, in part offensively. If so, we might wonder whether thinking in terms of attack, rather than defence, helps her generate the perception of danger on which she acts : she does act in a highly precipitate way on slender grounds (and with no consequences (for her)). (If it is, indeed, a genuine apprehension of threat, given that Michèle seems unengaged and disingenuous when explaining her pre-emptive actions - just as when, earlier in the film, she more than mischievously blamed a substantially wrecked bumper on quelqu'un ?)
Michèle (Isabelle Huppert - who brought us the insane and transgressive intensity of Haneke's The Piano Teacher (La pianiste) (2001)) is interchangeably gaming in her living whilst also living in her gaming, and so candidly says to Richard Leblanc (from whom she is, if not divorced, then separated), about his young girlfriend, You've broken the rules. (Richard suggests that he was not aware that there were any, but thereby plays her game : he may not recently have read, or at all, Eric Berne's book Games People Play, on transactional analysis...)
Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel in The Piano Teacher (2001)
Oscar Isaac, as the title-character of Inside Llewyn Davies (2013), the pair of Paul and Peter (played, respectively, by Arno Frisch and Frank Giering) in Funny Games¹ (1997) [the German-language original], and Michèle in Elle all have in common that they prioritize their (emotional or other) need over that of others : it is partly in the degree of the middle example that it differs, with its scenario of torture and pain. (Which Michael Haneke says that he is willing us not to keep watching. Having, one way or another, disposed of three members of a family, it turns out to be only so that Peter and Paul can cyclically move on to exploit an earlier introduction to another family as an entrée for their previous opening gambit.) With Llewyn Davies, even if he were not portrayed as a performing artist, persisting until he becomes successful (as we always knew that he did), there is a narcissistic quality to him that may make us find him unlikeable.
As you say, she’s the CEO of this company that makes incredibly violent… video-games. She seems inured to violence. […] She deals with [her past] in her own way, but she’s potentially quite icy, so the music, especially with the harp, sort of, doing this round-and-round rhythm all the time, gives her a sort of heartbeat, a sort of centre.
At Michèle's dinner-party on Christmas Eve : Vimala Pons and Charles Berling (as Hélène and Richard)
It is also clear that (as we all can do) Michèle disapplies some rules, in respect of others (to the extent of seriously being told You’re so selfish, it’s frightening), but expecting that they should hold for her : at her dinner-table, we have – of all things – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 playing [Brief Encounter (1945)], but – as well as flirting, and more – waiting for the right moment to press on the weak point (irrespective of what the consequences may be), and then denying any responsibility again. (It may not be a meaningful distinction (and not one of which she is likely to be conscious) whether Michèle does what she does because she 'needs to', or because – pre-emptively, and selectively – she can : at a crucial time, when she asks, of another who acts as she³, Pourquoi ?, all that she is told is C’était nécessaire.)
If we closely consider our view of Isabelle Huppert, on screen, we will realize that, by one or other of these techniques, her character generally avoids being truly present to us : degrees of soft focus, as well as imparting pallor to her, or limiting the aperture of the camera or the use of light on her so that she is under-lit.
Twice, when she is telling a story about herself and choosing to charm / be charming (to one of the nurses, and at her dinner-party), Michèle gives a veiled appearance of being candid, but she knows exactly what impression she chooses to give, whereas there are probably only three (or four) occasions when we can say that she is directly present in the way that the other characters are. (There are even extreme out-of-focus views of Michèle, looking across the car to Patrick, as he drives her back after the launch-party – a hint of Crash (1996) ?)
In Brody's opinion, Huppert’s performance is no more than standard — which, for an actor of her rare art, is high — but not distinctive. She is, as she usually is, precise, controlled, dryly witty, understated, fiercely committed, risqué.
A closing thought :
Giving a childish excuse, youngsters might say that ‘Mr Nobody did it’ – or that quelqu'un had.
What if someone whose treatment caused her to became dehumanized – and was no longer allowed to be Michèle - because, whoever that was, that was not who this person was now ?
Could that person inhabit the second half of the name Mich-èle, and become just Elle... ?
End-notes :
¹ In films from Haneke's oeuvre, we need not limit our thinking to Funny Games, though, because – without spelling them out – themes in The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), or The White Ribbon (2009) are highly relevant here.
² If so, although seeing Llewyn Davies' narcissism play out (and bothering to contrive to get to Chicago, but with no idea how to present himself) is relatively uninteresting, because his is an almost one-dimensional portrayal, and The Coen Brothers import positivity to the affect through Carey Mulligan and to her in the musical numbers (although they are done less well than usually given credit for). On the level of the quality of the film and of its music, and the depth of the performances, might one think that Un cœur en hiver (1992) has much more to offer ?).
Daniel Auteuil (as Stéphane) in Un cœur en hiver (1992)
³ In the book that he wrote with John Cleese, Robyn Skynner describes The Family Systems Exercise in this way : Its purpose is to show what lies behind the way that couples pick each other out across a crowded room ! Families and How to Survive Them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1984), p. 17.
⁴ Whatever that – and there are very good reasons for asking – says about Michèle's deeper motivations.
⁵ Of course, that does happen commonly enough, at a pivotal time in a mother’s life. Yet we only hear about the connection between Anna and her (seemingly ?) inconsequentially when, with apparent absolute candour, she tells a story that invokes the two women before King Solomon : is Michèle broken in the sort of way where she would want half a disputed child ?
Or where, in all the circumstances, someone might normally be expected to explode at an employee who still cheekily expects to be paid, she just says no.)
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
