In French. 131 minute running time so at least 30 to 40 minutes too long … this movie was comically bad … Isabelle Huppert is in her SIXTIES, nobody wants to rape her, especially every half hour … and it was perverse in the way that only French movies can be, just dumb and sickening and it makes you wonder how the hell these things get made. Total garbage. Do I have John Farr to blame for this one? Yes, another terrible recommendation, Farr! Nominated for eleven French Césars, sweet Jesus!

Dick Brody gets it right: “‘Elle’ sets up a house of cards that trivializes and—in the guise of earnest dramatic attention—pathologizes Michèle’s pleasures by embedding them in her own peculiar, almost impossibly exceptional life experience, in circumstances that, despite the sobriety of the drama, turn the character into a muffled mockery, an unwitting freak show … Verhoeven is uninterested in Michèle except as a tool for his problem set, for his message mechanism, for his facile issue-mongering, issue-muddying provocation.”