Tag: Isabelle Huppert

My New Friends (Les Gens d’à Côté)

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QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN

Isabelle Huppert and André Téchiné are two powerhouses of French cinema. They only worked together once, 45 years ago, in The Brontë Sisters. This means that the expectations are high, at least for this humble film journalist. Unfortunately, when we set the bar so high, the odds of disappointment are equally bis. My New Friends is an unsatusfactory film, with plenty of good intentions, most of them left unfulfilled.

Huppert is Lucie, a police forensic expert. Her husband Slimane, an African immigrant, also a policeman, committed suicide due to work pressures. As she grieves, a young couple moves next door, with Rose, their 13-year-old daughter. Lucie gets closer to them, without knowing that Yann (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, from Robin Campillo’s 120 BPM, from 2017), the husband, is an anti-police activist and artist with a long criminal record. The main subject of the film is Lucie’s moral dilemma between her professionalism and her desire to help his family. Huppert’s character runs a a lot: it seems to calm her down and keep her fit. At 71, the French actress indeed remains very fit.

This is a good premise that could have provoked some interesting discussions about police morality and ethics as well as Yann’s motivations, but unfortunately Téchiné seems more interested in devising unexpected twists and turns. At the ripe age of 80 years, he seems to be in a rush. The film is very fast-paced. This gives the impression that Téchiné is not really interested in getting inside the psychology of the individual characters. A little trivia: .My New Friends features is a special appearance of Stéphane Rideau of Wild Reeds He plays a police chief.

Lucie’s dilemma is superficially examined. Huppert’s trademark detachment and calculated coldness in her acting her personal drama even a little more inscrustable. Téchiné has some very emotionally affectig dramas such as My Favourite Season (1993) and Wild Reeds (1994). This time, he feels a lot more distant from his characsters. It’s only in the second act that it all slows down a little, and Huppert does what she does best: she gets passionate and shows her vulnerability. Lucie gets very attached to Julia (Hafsia Herzi) Yann’s wife, and to their daughter Rose (Romane Meunier). But once the police discover she is helping Yann – who is actually under house arrest – and capture him at his house, Lucie fears she will lose her new friends. It’s a breath of fresh air in this mostly gritty story. Without giving away any spoilers, it suffices to say that the closing is satisfactory.

Let’s all hope Huppert and Téchiné Collaborate once again. Neither one has another 45 years to wait!

My New Friends just premiered in the Panorama section of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.

Marianne

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A medium shot of Isabelle Huppert, talking heads style. She sits on a sofa and looks directly into the camera, occasionally glancing at some notes. She engages in a conversation in English with us members of the audiences, staring us firmly in the eyes. She repeatedly asks: “what do YOU want me to say?”, “who are you?”, while also insisting that she is connected to us through some invisible mirror. Her various musings include the nature of film, the essence of reality, and our knowledge that we are watching a movie. “Wake up!!!”, she screams out loud in the hope to engage viewers who may have drifted away onto oneiric territory. “You are here out of free will, and you stayed for longer than an hour also out of free will”, she exclaims, almost as if encouraging audience members to leave the theatre in abject rejection of the movie’s “fancy pants narrative”.

Michael Rozen sets out to break just about every convention of filmmaking, purposely irritating cinephiles: breaking the fourth wall, jump cuts that serve no narrative purpose, unnecessary repetitions, a boom mic that makes a brief appearance, random subtitles in horrible bold white font that randomly appear and disappear on different parts of the screen. Maybe the filmmaker wishes to turn films-lovers into film-haters. Marianne is a one-woman show, a cinematic tour-de-force and intellectual torture, all at the same time. This is the type of deeply conceptual and contextual movie that only works in a very specific environment during a specific time: the film festival circuit. This is also the type of film that would be dismissed as sheer garbage if it didn’t have a star of such high calibre on the lead. On the same way that Marcel Duchamps’s “Fountain” (the infamous urinal) would be ignored had it been planted in an art gallery by an ordinary citizen at a different time.

The idea of reflection is a recurring one, as Marianne Lewandovsky (the name that Huppert gives her character, shortly before rescinding her identity) ponders about the notion of the mirror, while also referring to Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman (in an oblique reference to the former’s Mirror, 1975). The notion that cinema mirrors real life is discussed. She vehemently affirms the script is “real”, and that she may be reading her text from a teleprompter, only to dismiss her claims as a joke. The director and the actress cleverly toy with concepts of authorship and perspective. In a way, Marianne is a mockery of cinema. A joke that can be quite affecting, but also easily overlooked or misunderstood.

One of the most subversive elements of Marianne is Huppert’s face. The 70-year-old actress subverts time by looking younger and even more beautiful than 20 years. And just as hypnotic and fascinating as ever. Few actresses successfully embody as many contradictions. Huppert conveys a sense of cynicism, while exuding an irresistible allure. Staring her in the eyes for such a long time is both humbling and disturbing.

Marianne shows at the 41st Turin International Film Festival. Writer and director Michael Rozek a former journalist for such publications as Esquire and Rolling Stone.

Frankie

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Big director: tick. French diva: tick. Top-drawer cast including British, American and Irish actors: tick. A superb location with historical buildings and a breathtaking coast: tick. A huge budget: tick. Frankie has all the ingredients of a large international co-production. However, this is not a surefire recipe for an effective drama. Frankie doesn’t gel together. The outcome is a tedious, partly formulaic and mostly unremarkable movie.

Frankie (Huppert) is a successful film star living in London with her British husband Jimmy (Brendan Gleeson). They have a child each. Frankie’s son Paul (Jeremie Renier) is bitter and greedy, resentful that his mother is going to donate her €3 million flat in Paris to a charitable foundation, leaving him with nothing after she dies. Jimmy’s daughter Sylvia (Vinette Robinson) is becoming increasingly estranged from her husband Ian (Aryion Bakare). They have a teenage daughter called Maya (Sennia Nanua). Frankie and Paul bump into an old friend and colleague from New York called Ilene (Marisa Tomei), who’s travelling with her boyfriend Gary (Greg Kinnear). Gary wants Frankie to star in his next film, unaware that she has but months to live. Frankie has hired a luxurious villa in Sintra, where she hopes that the entire family will meet. All of the action takes place within the course of a single day.

Gradually, dark secrets from the past begin to emerge, such as the reason why Paul begrudges his mother, and why the family split decades earlier. Sylvia reveals that she has been mulling a divorce for a long time. Ian displays his knowledge of UK law, diligently listing the five legal grounds for divorce, and the ways to obtain a decree absolute. Ilene isn’t having the time of her life either, after her boyfriend does something quite unexpected and with dire consequences.

Quaint and historical Sintra and the neighbouring coastal town of Praia das Macas provide the idyllic backdrop to the far less rosy occasion. The characters visit the historical sites, take long strolls along the pebbled streets and misty countryside roads. Maya takes a charming tram to the beach, where she befriends a local. While the shooting locations are indeed stunningly beautiful, the sequences often feel contrived. Like a Visit Portugal publicity stunt. It’s obvious that the regional government poured tons of money into the project. Which is fine. It’s just that Sachs could have been a little more subtle about it.

But the biggest problem with Frankie is that the story lacks vigour and flare. The dialogues feel forced and laborious. Even the film climax – when Frankie opens up about her terminal condition – left me feeling cold. I doubt anyone in the audience shed any tears. Sachs makes quiet and observational films, always keeping a safe distance from his characters. He has often been compared to Eric Rohmer. This time he got the distance wrong, instead alienating viewers. He was probably so preoccupied with boasting his A-list cast and pleasing his Portuguese sponsors that he allowed his firm directorial grip to slip away. Ultimately, I don’t know what Frankie is all about. It’s one of these films that wants to communicate a lot and ends up with very little to say.

Frankie showed in competition at the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. A very poor choice for the Festival’s main selection. It’s out in cinemas on Friday, May 28th. On VoD on Monday, September 20th (2021).

Reinventing Marvin (Marvin ou la Belle Education)

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There’s a clue in the opening title. Flames sparkle down the screen. It’s a fiery film, passionate in character and introspection, visceral in choreography, elegiac in self-discovery. French-born star Finnegan Oldfield is excellent, brining varied realities and nuances that benefits a film of surreal posturing. Through a journey from village to city, the cameras swirl with the delightful kitsch it needs, stamped with the epicurean appearance from Isabelle Hupert herself (playing herself, no less).

Huppert is the mentor and icon Marvin needs to truly become Martin, a metamorphosis transformation he intends to perform through a grand show. He meets her through an older man he is escorting, interweaving pasts and presents. The story delves between the child taunted and bullied in a homophobic town and the adult who lets his demons out on a stage. There is something viscerally hallucinatory in a scene where young Marvin finds himself distracted by the viperous sounds of a fairground, the lights and neons a choreography of visual insanity, in a tale that cuts from past to present in an uneasy (but intriguing) manner.

This is the latest in Anne Fontaine’s eclectic range of films (Coco Before Chanel, La Fille de Monaco, Comment j’ai tué mon père) and while the film is decidedly over-long, there are enough moments of interest within the story. A scene in which young Marvin sits uncomfortably with his overweight, chip-munching, loudmouthed parents is a particularly harrowing one, as dark as the frequent clips of a bare-chested Oldfield are decidedly sensual.

Grégory Gadebois, Catherine Salée and Vincent Macaigne are strong and stable in their performances, but it is the two leads, (Jules Poirer as boy, Oldfield as adult) who truly cement the film. Poirer gives a haunted performance, cerebral in his wish to run from the hateful, homophobic Vosges to find himself in the similarly lost adult he has become. Oldfield has some great lines, but it is his bodily acting that steeps with grace and loss, helpless, he falls into Huppert’s arms.

It’s a tale of an underdog, an artist looking for subjects to paint, reflecting himself through stealth, through dance, through fire.

Reinventing Martin is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 14th.

Eva

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QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

A French psycho-sexual thriller starring 65-year-old Isabelle Huppert playing a wealthy prostitute, with flavours of Ozon and Haneke. Sounds like the surefire recipe for a dirtylicious movie. What could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot. Benoit Jacquot’s Eva has a disjointed script. Far more seriously, it lacks naughtiness. It lacks humour. There’s no zest, there’s no jest. It’s a film that blends in too many flavours, and they ultimately kill off each each other. The outcome is vapid and bland.

The beginning of the film looks promising. An elderly writer dies and his young and good-looking prostitute Bertrand (Gaspard Ulliel, best known for portraying Hannibal Lecter in Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising, 2007) steals the manuscript of his latest play, entitled “Passwords”. Bertrand becomes rich and famous by claiming to have written the play himself. He now has a beautiful girlfriend, who suspects the authenticity of his authorship. He meets a prostitute called Eva (Isabelle Huppert), and the two begin to develop a twisted bond. Bertrand then starts writing a book (this time his own) based on his experience with Eva. He embarks on new sexual adventures in search or creative inspiration (just like Charlotte Rampling’s character in Ozon’s masterpiece Swimming Pool, 2003)

Eva has a dirty secret, too. She’s married and her husband is in jail. She works in the sex industry apparently in an attempt to pay for her husband’s lawyer fees so he can be freed on probation as soon as possible. It feels like the role was written specifically for Huppert: she’s her usual confident and subversive self, she had a BDSM instrument (just like in Haneke’s The Pianist, 1999) and she even cracks the skull of the protagonist open (just like in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle last year). Huppert is convincing enough, and she looks absolutely stunning for her age. And it’s quite fun to watch her donning a dark wig.

The major problem with Eva is that the script is too convoluted and discombobulated. The many narrative threads get lost, and instead of an ambiguous, open ending, we are left with a “what the heck just happened” type of closure. The attempts at comedy are equally ineffective. A lot of people in the theatre laughed. But they laughed at the film, not at the story. So I can tell you with confidence I wasn’t alone in my disappointment.

The film also lacks nudity (male and female). There are no genitals and no breasts, only a carefully placed sheet over the two lovers in bed. Not what you would expect from a French film about a prostitute. Perhaps the septuagenarian French director Benoit Jacquot – a regular at the Berlinale – intended for it to become an international blockbuster, so he watered down the most explicit visuals. The film is adapted from British writer James Hadley Chase’s eponymous novel. It was previously made into a film by Joseph Losey starring the late Jeanne Moreau (in 1962). I have neither read the book nor watched the previous film, so it is possible that I missed certain nuances. Still, I would recommend you avoid this movie, unless you are itching to see Huppert donning femme fatale red apocalipstick and a new wig (which is of course an entirely bona fide reason).

Eva is showing the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, and it’s vying for the major prize the Golden Bear.

Mrs Hyde (Madame Hyde)

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Threaded with an absurdist tone throughout its narrative, Serge Bozon’s Mrs Hyde is surprisingly captivating in its characters, setting and cinematic language. In the lead role, Isabelle Huppert portrays a conserved teacher who struggles to captivate the imagination of her boisterous science students. In the actress’ chameleonic abilities, seamlessly merging into the women she portrays, it is hard not to be absorbed in watching Huppert deep in the fragility of Mrs Géquil. Bozon’s direction too imbues the film with a contemporary edge, offering colourful frames to compliment the swift cinematography.

Gentle – furthered by Huppert’s slim figure – Mrs Géquil struggles daily to hold the attention of her teenage pupils. Merging into the soft pastel colours of the school classroom, her outfits emphasise how passive her authority is. Constantly interrupted by Malik (Adda Senani) and his rowdy classmates leave the teacher in a position of powerlessness. Not supported by the school’s head teacher (Romain Duris) – who is more concerned with keeping up with the kids than expelling them – forces her into her scientific laboratory. Away from her work, Marie has a stay-at-home husband who respects her sense of being.

Having witnessed Bozon discuss the film in a talk in the New York Film Festival last year, it is evident from his personality that the eccentricity of his character’s situations is an apt reflection of the director himself. Bestowed with a title that alludes towards Robert Louis Stevenson iconic novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, its references the duality that human nature possesses. In the instance of Marie, after experimenting in her laboratory during a thunderstorm, the consequences are life changing – offering a comical twist on the somewhat clichéd superhero origins story. Malik says: “I believe in superheroes because they are not real, whereas you Mrs Géquil, are”.

Possessing a quick edit, resulting in moments of comedy or absurdism, Madame Hyde, in this cinematic tool, shifts along at a pace which benefits the narrative. Captudre with a crispness in the quick yet steady movements of Céline Bozon, moments are not dwellt upon and have an eagerness to them. Furthered by its three-act structure, with a 90-minute running time, Bozon constructs a tightly constructed narrative, leaving little room for overindulgence.

Welding a script that pivots on a theme of the importance of education, and the pivotal relationships teachers and pupils share in forming the latter’s being, Huppert roots the film in an eccentric, fragile tone. Equivalent to some of her best roles, the iconic French actress wields the ability to transform into any character she possesses. Benefited by the contrasting clothes she wears as she enters her Hyde-esque transformation, the visual sight of Marie wearing a luscious red shirt in the final few scenes speaks a thousand words of her transformation.

Akin to his contemporaries of Bruno Dumot and Eugène Green, Serge Bozon may be an acquired French taste, nonetheless, his eccentricities and distinctive style is undeniable to be revelled in.

Mrs Hyde shows as part of the Berlin Critics’ Week, which runs parallel to the 68th Berlinale, when this piece was originally written.

Watch Mrs Hyde right here with DMovies and Eyelet:

Souvenir

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If you’re searching for a feel-good movie that’s somehow supposed to make you believe in love again, look no further. With a sheer dose of talent of the performers, Souvenir, the new film by French Bavo Defurne, opening in British cinemas, might just do the trick.

As far as screenplays go, we’ve got a pretty traditional one. Liliane (Isabelle Huppert) works in a paté factory who incidentally bumps upon Jean (Kevin Azais), a boxed with a passion for French chanson. He recognises her as Laura, a chanteuse that finished second in 1974 Eurovision Contest, and who fell into oblivion shortly after. He says he’s a fan and wants her to sing again, which she declines at first. She ends up singing in his boxing club and, despite the age gap, they form a relationship. Together, they decide to get her on top of the game again.

If it sounds like a typical boy-meets-girl with some age issues as dramatic seasoning, it’s because it is. The script doesn’t say anything new and it’s not purporting to, either. What eventually sells the piece is the ability of the filmmakers to tell its story in an efficient and believable way.

Just like in Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016), the significance of Huppert here cannot be overstated. She takes the beaten material to a new level, showing us a little of her rarely seen lighter side in the process. Known internationally for her portrait of steely French women, the actress gives a very moving carefree performance. He’s less likely to get any credit for it, but Azaïs doesn’t disappoint either, scoring points for making us root for a very naive character.

This very naïveté gives makes Souvenir charming. The protagonists fall for each other through the sound of their voices and in the delightful sequences when Jean finds himself in Liliane’s place.

What a coincidence that it hits British cinemas at exactly the same time as The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) celebrates its 50th anniversary with a new release in cinemas. Where Nichols portrays a very cynical and predatory relationship between a young man and an older woman, Souvenir shows pretty much the opposite. Liliane might be as desperate as Ms. Robinson, but she’s hurt in a way that sex alone won’t fix her.

We can look for things beyond the romance, if we want to. There’s a lot of humour in the generation gap between the characters and a commentary on the sexism in the entertainment industry. When Liliane goes to her ex-husband and manager, Tony (Johan Leysen) for help, we see that he’s aged too, the difference is that he is wealthier and more successful at work.

People say that she stopped singing because of their divorce, something she even agrees with in public. Alone with Jean, however, she confesses that she didn’t stop and implies that people just didn’t care for her anymore. That such confession comes from the lips of Huppert, a steadily good actress with more than 40 years in the field, adds an extra dimension and taste to the movie. Souvenir is not about that, though. It’s about attraction and relationships that defy logic, and the personal growth that comes with them. Just like falling in love with an old tune for the first time.

Souvenir is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 23rd.

Click here for the review of our dirty favourite with Isabelle Huppert this year!

Happy End

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This was by far the most eagerly anticipated film of the 70th Cannes International Film Festival. That’s because Michael Haneke’s last two films L’Amour (2009) and The White Ribbon (2012) both received the Palme d’Or. Plus he received other major prizes at the event for The Piano Teacher (2001) and Hidden (2005). And this also he kick-started his international career exactly 20 years ago with Funny Games.

The stakes were very high and the anticipation was such that the Festival and the director refused to provide a synopsis of the film. The only information available until two days ago were a couple of pictures, a short extract (at the bottom of this article), the cast and a very succinct clue as to what the film may be: “All around us, the world, and we, in its midst, blind.”

Haneke has delivered yet another majorly bleak study of Europe and human being. It tells the story of a bourgeois family based in Calais. Anne Laurent (Haneke’s regular anti-superstar Isabelle Huppert) runs the family business because her father Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant, pictured below) is too old and her son Pierre (Franz Rogowski) is too emotionally unstable. Her brother Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) has a wife, a mysterious lover and two children, including 13-year-old Eve (Fantine Harduin) – whose mother is in hospital in a comma after a suicide attempt.

Death and suicide are central themes of the film, and they seem affect nearly every character in one way or another. Taking away your own life look like the only feasible solution, the only possible “happy end” to these deeply trouble people. They are engulfed in the mediocrity of their vulgar wealth, their loveless relationships and their futile routines. Huppert is extremely effective as usual, even if her character is one of the least complex in the movie. The little Fantine Harduin is the star of the movie, conveying a sense of misery and gloom that is guaranteed haunt you. Jean-Louis Trintignant is also very convincing in the role of the patriarch losing not just his desire to live but also his connection to the real world, as dementia begins to set in.

The first sequence of the movie will upset animal lovers, and I’m still not sure how it was done (whether the animal was harmed or killed in the making). One way or the other, it’s very realistic, and it sets the tone for the movie very early on: this is going to a deadly ride.

The socio-political commentary is also there. It is no coincidence that the film takes place in Calais, located in one of only two departments where Marine Le Pen beat Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential elections this month, and also where thousands of refugees are located. These largely unwelcomed aliens, who were often the subject of Le Pen’s rabid campaigning platform, make a very inconvenient appearance in a crucial moment of the film.

While effective as both a socio-political and emotional statement, Happy End feels a little trite if you are familiar with Haneke’s filmography and cinematic trademarks. It tries to recycle old devices without adding anything new. You will recognise the twisted sexuality of The Piano Teacher, the obsession with capturing banal actions on camera of Hidden and a very central element of Amour (which I can’t mention without spoiling the movie). In a nutshell, Happy End is a little too ambitious and not fresh enough.

Happy End was very well received, but it did not take the Palme d’Or home (which would be the Austrian director’s third). I wasn’t rooting for it. Haneke needs to come up with more original devices before taking receiving the highest prize in the film festival world for the third time.

This piece was originally written during the Cannes International Film Festival in May. The film premieres in the UK during the 61st BFI London Film Festival, taking place from October 5th to 15th. It is finally out in cinemas on Friday, December 1st.

Claire’s Camera (Keul-Le-Eo-Ui Ka-Me-La)

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No, I didn’t overlook it and repeat myself. This is a Korean film set in Cannes and it also premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The film features the big star of the event, the emblematic French actress Isabelle Huppert. So it’s only natural that it received a lot of attention and a filled up one of the large theatres of the Palais des Festivals.

It’s also a good film. It tells the story of the film saleswoman Jeon Man-hee (Kim Min-hee), who is made redundant from her job while in Cannes for the premiere of a film by the director So Wansoo (Jeong Jin-young). Her female boss accuses her of dishonesty, but in reality she’s being dismissed because she had sex with the filmmaker, with whom her boss also her a relation. Meanwhile, the teacher poet Claire (Isabelle Huppert) casually meets both the director and Man-hee, and she develops a bond with the young and pretty lady.

Claire always carries a camera around and takes pictures of most people she meets. She wants immortalise qualities in some sort of Dorian Gray way, arguing that people change very quickly, even within a few hours. Huppert is excellent, conveying profundity in the most banal actions. There are some moments of awkward silence – probably due to the cultural differences between the French and the Korean – which are both funny and moving. Huppert isn’t just the master of the dysfunctional. She’s also very good at the mundane.

The serendipitous meets, the small talk, the triviality of the events, the placid attitude of the characters and the slow pace of the movie are very much reminiscent of the late French filmmaker Eric Rohmer. Both Sang-soo and Rohmer directors have a very female sensitivity, and they know how to touch viewers with a simple and straight-forward language, devoid of complex tricks and epic twists. This is very human cinema, arresting for its simplicity.

Claire’s Camera showed as part of the 70th Cannes Film Festival (2017), when this piece was originally written. Hong Sang-soo is one of the biggest exponents of Korean cinema right now, and three of his films showed in Cannes last year. The director confessed last year that he’s in a relationship with Min-hee, suggesting that the film has many biographical elements. Claire’s Camera shows on July 23rd as a teaser of the London Korean Film Festival.

Elle

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In Paul Verhoeven’s twisted world, dysfunction in the norm. His latest morbid sex thriller is a strangely tasteful return to his famous 1992 classic Basic Instinct. This time, instead of young Sharon Stone he picked the 64-year-old French actress Isabelle Huppert, best known for her seedy and disturbing movie characters (such as the sadomasochistic Erika in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, 2001). The outcome in explosive.

Here she plays Michèle Leblanc, the director of a gaming business and the daughter of serial killer. She still resents her divorce, and she also has a very difficult relationship with her son and daughter-in-law. Plus, she slams her mother for wanting to marry a rent boy decades her junior. At work, she is loathed for her assertive and obstinate demeanour. Oh, and she has an affair with her best friend’s husband. Everyone around Michèle seems to have equally unorthodox relations. Betrayal, voyerism and abuse are the fuel for love and romance. And everyone seems to be happy about that.

Michèle is raped by an assailant wearing a ski mask in her own home repeated times, but she decides against calling the police. Despite the fact that she resists her rapist, there’s always the suggestion and she is finding pleasure in the violation. Viewers will wonder whether this is merely a dirty seduction game. Some feminists are certain to cringe at this film, at the idea that some women secretly wish to be raped. Does Michèle enjoy when the stranger enters her house? And does she enjoy it when he enters her body? The scenes are very erotic, and there’s even a quick vulva flash, very much à la Sharon Stone. Huppert is a very fit and sexy sexagenarian. Let’s just hope at least the director asked for the actress’ consent this time!

Feminists don’t have a cosy relationship with the Dutch filmmaker since Basic Instinct. That’s not just because of the vulva, but also due to the negative portrayal of a lesbian – depicted as a confident sexual predator. The lewd, voyeristic and heterosexual male gaze is prevalent in both Basic Instinct and Elle, but this doesn’t make them misogynous. Everyone in the film is either a perpetrator or a blithe accomplice of erratic sexual behaviour and dalliances. Verhoeven’s gaze is so twisted that it’s hardly human; it’s instead an allegory of the absurd, served with an exquisitely charming finish.

The film is also a natural fit for the French actress. Michèle here is a proactive sadist, just like Erika (Huppert’s character in The Piano Teacher). But instead of placing broken glass in the coat pocket of a talented student, here she crashes into her ex’s car and places a toothpick into the food of his new lover. It’s almost as if Verhoeven created the role specially for Isabelle Huppert after watching Haneke’s film.

Elle is a gutural experience. There’s blood everywhere: on the head, on the leg, inside a syringe or the bath tub. Blood here is doubly representative: it’s both the pathology (as in being ill with a disease or giving birth) and the violence. At one point, Michèle suffers a car accident and has to walk around with a leg brace, but that doesn’t stop her being raped again. Michèle and her assailant have a libido akin to the characters of Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996), with the car wrecks et all.

Strangely enough, the surviving characters find redemption at the end of the movie. Someone says: “he was a good man, with a tortured soul” (we won’t reveal who as not to spoil the film), while donning the perfect smile, despite the horrific events that has just taken place. Indeed, people here seem to find happiness and closure under the most tragic circumstances. No one is bad, they just have a tormented existence. So let’s rejoice and celebrate our dirtiest fetishes and desires. Hip hip hooray!

Elle was out in UK cinemas in March, when this piece was originally written. It was made available on BFI Player in September.

Things to Come (L’Avenir)

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French actress Isabelle Huppert is best remembered for her role as the dysfunctional and sadistic piano teacher Erika Kohutin in The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke/ 2001) or a tachycardiac Augustine in Eight Women (François Ozon/ 2002). In Things to Come she plays again a teacher (called Nathalie), but this time she lectures philosophy and has a very different demeanour and approach to life.

Unlike Erika, Nathalie is a respectful teacher, as well as a loving wife and mother. She does not challenge the scheme and the establishment of which she is part. In fact, she avoids confrontation at all costs. She does not adhere to a student strike, and she hardly says a word when her husband asks for a divorce because he is in love with another woman. Nathalie is mostly calm and considerate, a far cry from cry from Huppert’s explosive roles for which she is best known.

Nathalie is oblivious to the fact that she does not practise what she preaches at university. Philosophy is a venting outlet for many of her students, and many are ardent strikers and aspiring revolutionaries with radical ideas. She criticises their “radicalism” and preaches a more moderate approach to life. Her philosophy teachings seem to imprison rather than liberate her.

Her passivity towards her predicament and her latent anguish gradually choke her. She claims that she is free after her husband left her, her kids grew and her mother died, but she is unable to live out these sentiments of liberty. She points out that her black cat will not survive more than five minutes because it never knew freedom, when it escapes into the forest. She fails to realise that this is a comment on the unfeasibility of her own freedom.

Things to Come often remind viewers that death is the only inevitability of life. The film title is introduced with a graveyard in the background, and Nathalie’s mother dies of depression after being placed in an old’s people home. During funeral arrangements, Nathalie explains that her mother felt abandoned throughout her life because her parents left her as a young child. Once again, Nathalie fails to see the writing on the wall, despite her profound philosophical knowledge: her mother died because she could not handle being once again abandoned, this time by her own daughter (who put her in the old people’s home).

Various political themes and philosophical aspirations are also touched upon in the film. They include the student revolution of 1968, the lowering of the retirement age in France, the meaning of established truth, writings by Rousseau, etc. European intellectuals are mentioned throughout the film, such as Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Thoughts and reflections are conspicuous, yet there are few actionable deeds. Nathalie herself points out at one occasion: “it is impossible to reconcile thought and action”.

Hansen-Løve is only 35 years old and she has already directed several acclaimed films such as All is Forgiven and The Father of My Children. She is certain not to disappoint audiences with the quiet and powerful Things to Come.

Supported by very strong performances and a beautiful photography of Paris, the coast Brittany and the bucolic Vercors Mountains, Things to Come is a subtle commentary on the futility of philosophy, and the often weak intellectual fodder that sustains European literature and cinema.

Things to Come premiered at the 66th Berlinale (2016), when this piece was originally written. It was out in cinemas in August the same year. It’s on Mubi in October 2020.