This is an extended version of my Guardian article from March 2017.
Rape apologists: do you like the cinema? Have you always suspected that women secretly want to be stalked, brutalised and raped? And that the biggest most callous womanhaters on the planet are not men, but women themselves? Then brace yourselves for a celluloid treat.
Indeed, rank, puzzled revulsion at women’s cravenness is the alpha and omega of the film. In Elle, the only person who enjoys rape more than the rapist is the victim and good old-fashioned male violence is more honest than base, twisted female psychology.
In a punch in the face to all survivors of men’s endemic sexual violence, the filmmakers have recast the perpetrator and his victim as being in some kind of relationship or affair driven by her masochism, in which his abusiveness is simply a necessary fuel. “What’s between us, it’s sick,” she sighs as he, miraculously transformed from terrifying rapist to sullen lover, drives her home like they’re a couple.
Rape apologists: do you like the cinema? Have you always suspected that women secretly want to be stalked, brutalised and raped? And that the biggest most callous womanhaters on the planet are not men, but women themselves? Then brace yourselves for a celluloid treat.
The film Elle opened in the UK earlier this year and has received
rapturous praise, trailing five star
reviews and an Oscar nomination for its star, Isabelle Huppert, who is “utterly
arresting” (Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian), “exhilarating…bottomlessly
impressive” (Robbie Collin in the Telegraph) and has an “astonishing, almost
terrifying talent” (A O Scott in the NY Times).
Huppert is all those things and Elle gives her a lot to
do and say, alongside an excellent cast working with a full, dynamic script. But
that is separate from the toxicity of the film’s gender politics. Indeed the
praise, from an overwhelmingly male critical establishment, shows how
entrenched and unquestioned rape culture is. The film is described as controversial –
but there is nothing controversial about men turning rape into an ambiguous act
in which women victims are portrayed as duplicitous, untrustworthy and perverse.
All over the world, men rape. And all over the world, other men collude to
misconstrue the attack in a way that minimises the rape, muddies the context, excuses
the perpetrator and imputes shady motivations to the victim. It happens in
court rooms and companies, house parties and political parties, corporate
workplaces – and film companies. Elle is no different.
In this “rape revenge comedy” the central character
Michele, played by Huppert, does not seek revenge against her rapist. Quite the
opposite: she tries to escalate her connection to the rapist once she finds out
who he is. And there is no comedy in watching a brilliant performer act out
demeaning slanders created by men: Philippe Dijan, who wrote the original
novel; Harold Manning, who did the French story adaptation ; Said Ben Said and
Michel Merkt, who produced the film; David Birke, who wrote the screenplay; and
Paul Verhoeven, who directed the film.
Verhoeven has spoken about how hard it was getting the
film made because no US actors would take on the lead role, as if they suffered
from some kind of inner female cowardice. Perhaps they were, instead, galled
and insulted to read a script bubbling over with facetious speculation about a
rape survivor’s psyche. Perhaps they have disdain for a previous film of
Verhoeven’s, Showgirls, where the camera lingers greedily over the brutal rape
of a young costume designer by a celebrity who gets away with it.
With its beautiful interiors, great clothes and virtually
all-white cast, Elle has the same Misogyny: The Lifestyle Edit vibe as Tom
Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, another highly praised piece of work in which all the
women are mocked, stripped, raped, humiliated, betrayed or murdered. But Elle
goes further, ascribing to women a masochistic pathology which somehow excuses
the abuse that men choose to perpetrate. Despite Michele’s ex having beaten
her, she tells him, “We should still be together.”
In Elle, the ferocious hatred behind men’s sexual
violence is nothing compared to women’s masochism, misogyny, venality and
irrationality. Men’s brutality is presented as uncomplicated, even attractively
virile, while women are apologists for it. Be warned – there are spoilers
ahead.
The film opens with Michele being viciously beaten and
raped in her Paris home. After a frown of surprise and a day of PTSD, it’s back
to life as usual. Michele runs a video game company developing a product in
which a woman is raped by a tentacled monster. The victim groans in pleasure
but Michele is not happy: “The orgasmic convulsions are not strong enough.”
Michelle and her female friends repeatedly refer to her
son’s girlfriend as a “slut”. The young woman is presented as a screaming nag and
then shown to be, indeed, “a little slut” when she gives birth to a baby who is
clearly mixed race; the dark-skinned baby is used as a racist sight-gag in a
film where racial mixing is a greater outrage than rape. The son himself
is a womanhater, both physically and verbally threatening towards his
girlfriend and his mother, but this male violence is depicted and passed off as
the passion of a man pushed to the brink by the women’s behaviour.
Michele is represented as a spiteful, sneaky woman-betrayer
with an eye for her friends’ partners. She is disgusted by her mother, who is
portrayed as a deluded grotesque who still has a soft spot for Michele’s
father, who was a serial killer (yep). Meanwhile, Michele’s neighbour is a
wholesome religious maniac who insists upon saying grace before dinner. But
don’t worry, her naivety gets its comeuppance.
There are some moments of psychological truthfulness: Michele’s
numbness in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which lead her friends to
think she is “bravely soldiering on”; her aversion and cynicism about going to
the police; the flashbacks and brief fantasy of having fought back; the impulse
to buy mace and an axe and enrol at a gun range. And, most correct and chilling
of all, the fact that the perpetrators are functional, outwardly nice guys –
friends, colleagues, relatives, family men.
But then it gets really gonzo, like full-on Rapist Polanski
Brian de Palma Ken Russell sexploitation shtick. When the rapist attacks again,
Michele fights back, unmasks him and it’s lust at first sight. Her terror turns
to rapture, the fear in her eyes becomes a smoulder of interest. She pursues
him with the raw zeal of an unhinged cougar in a ludicrous psychosexual potboiler
dreamed up by a club of men who have clearly never listened to an actual rape
survivor in all their lives. The
ultimate message, delivered with a smirking shrug, seems to be: men may be
bastards, but ladies be crazy! Michele even refers to herself handily
as a “psychopath” when recalling a childhood memory of colluding with her
father before his arrest.
In Elle, abusive men are depicted as the real victims of
women’s demented caprices, while women are portrayed as complicit in their own
abuse, as wanting it, engineering it, deliberately provoking it. “The whole
ridiculous situation is unbearable,” says Michele at some point, accurately. Soon
after discovering the rapist’s identity, Michele has a car accident. She calls
the rapist as if he's a friend of hers, and he tenderly bandages her leg while she talks to him in
a baiting yet minxy way. Later, during a party, he invites her to the basement
and attacks her for a third time, smashing her head against the wall, and she
loves it. “Do it!” she cries, prostrating herself – but that turns
him off, because he likes to really rape. She eventually induces him to
find some inner strength and finish the job, and her orgasmic throes earn a
telling look ofopen disgust from him.
Indeed, rank, puzzled revulsion at women’s cravenness is the alpha and omega of the film. In Elle, the only person who enjoys rape more than the rapist is the victim and good old-fashioned male violence is more honest than base, twisted female psychology.
In a punch in the face to all survivors of men’s endemic sexual violence, the filmmakers have recast the perpetrator and his victim as being in some kind of relationship or affair driven by her masochism, in which his abusiveness is simply a necessary fuel. “What’s between us, it’s sick,” she sighs as he, miraculously transformed from terrifying rapist to sullen lover, drives her home like they’re a couple.
It’s a classic, malicious lie, invented
by men: that rape awakens women’s sexuality.
Watching Elle, I wondered if Verhoeven or his male club
know any women. Do they know that we are not like this, that this is not how we
react, think, feel, behave? Do they know what it’s like to survive male abuse,
even as a woman as cool and capable as Michele?
Why has the critical reception been so wholeheartedly
approving? There was outrage when it was revealed that the actress Maria
Schneider was abused onscreen when filming the rape scene in Last Tango In
Paris and that the film’s director Bernardo Bertolucci and star Marlon Brando
had colluded to set her up and violate and abuse her on camera and film her horror. Why not with Elle? Is it
that Bertolucci and Brando are dead, reputations still intact, but misogynist
critics don’t want to impede Verhoeven’s progress as a man in the world –
because bros before hos? Is it that Elle is too ludicrous to take seriously? Or
too confidently presented to be challenged? Surely critics aren’t afraid
of speaking up, out of fear that they will look like an unfashionable prude who
doesn’t get with Elle’s pacy, racy provocation?
Or perhaps it’s
much simpler than that, and after centuries of patriarchy, endemic male sexual
violence, victim-blaming, rape myths and male impunity on screen, in life and
in court, viewers are genuinely 100% five star fine with unrestrainedly lauding
a film in which a woman loves to be beaten and raped.
