Elle

Michèle Leblanc, a successful and charismatic head of a video game company, is raped in her own home. Instead of meekly playing the role of victim, Michèle finds her attacker and plays a perverse game with him-with an unexpected finale. An adaptation of Philippe Djian's popular novel, Paul Verhoeven's film turned out to be one of most acclaimed and most awarded titles from last year. Critics praised the film primarily for Verhoeven's directorial mastery, as he deftly combined elements of a thriller with those of a black comedy. The ubiquitous humor in Elle not only makes the story more interesting, but it also allows the director to ridicule bourgeois morality and its resulting conventional take on male-female relationships. Thanks to a bold performance by Isabelle Huppert in the role of Michèle, Verhoeven'sfilm has also been interpreted as an ironic counterpoint to The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke.