Elle

Elle is an amazing film. A drama/thriller telling an imaginative and unconventional story. As important for me in the so pleasant experience that this film has been is the setting. Having an exciting job that allows to live a wealthy existence in Paris, inhabiting a gardened stone house (with those wooden shutters protecting those large windows)... buff, such a scenario mesmerises me.

If the setting is that great, the main character (with the superb performance of Isabell Huppert) is even more. A mature, sensual and powerful "femme d'affaires" that seems hardly affected by her horrible rape. The fashion in which she accepts one of the worst horrors that a woman can face is shocking and at the same time a bit revolting, as in a sense it seems to diminish how hideous such act is. Little by little the complicated history and personality of this woman unravel. The film revolves around the dangers and complexity of family, social, sexual and power relations, and does it astonishingly well,. Furthermore, it adds a few absolutely hilarious moments (not stupid humour, but the kind of comic situation that can come up at any moment, regardles of the seriousness of the time.

I could draw some similarties with Demonlover (another French masterpiece) and perhaps with Red Road. I first watched these films in the cinema, and I think films watched in the cinama keep a particular place in my memories and ranking.

The film is shot in French, but I was lucky that The American Cosmograph planned a session with French subtitles, that though intended for people with hearing disabilities, comes pretty handy for idiots like me that will never manage to understand spoken French. "désolé, je peux lire la Français sans problème, mais je ne comprends pas bien quand les gens parlent" is one of the few sentences that after so much repeating it I've managed to master its pronunciation)