Paul Verehoven directs Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte and Anne Consigny in this very dry and dark comedy of manners about a middle aged woman who is raped and then enters into a power struggle with everyone around her as she tracks down her assailant.

… AND he’s back. The provocateur is back. And even if this wears the ageing trappings of an upper middle class drama, the true intent is made explicit from our opening shot.  We start with a pet cat dispassionately observing a rape and things only get more shocking from there. Every scene messes with your sensibilities, even if it does it a bit more subtly than a robot cop heroically throwing a suspect through windows while reading him his rights or a murder suspect flashing her gash at the cops interviewing her. Unlike his extremely full on, Hollywood blockbuster entertainments, here Verehoven luxuriates in his European art house milieu. Meaning he can explore the diverse interactions of awful people trapped by family ties, workplace commitments and evolving sexual needs rather than the immediate violent reactions his genre works required. If you are a Guardian reader, you’ll find pretty much each and every cold twist and turn troubling. Good… you are meant to. You can leave your politics at the door and enjoy the often laugh out loud fun at safe distance (like that cat). Or you can work through the intellectual, ethical and emotional challenges as they calmly bombard you. Verehoven has created a gilded gauntlet for you to survive, it’s just a gauntlet of office parties, Christmas dinners and five star restaurant meet ups rather than gaudy satirical dystopias or cokey sleazy nightclubs. And Huppert brings her usual cold fish act and expands it into every crevice of the film. Constantly onscreen, constantly pushing to maintain her hard fought for upper hand, convincingly portraying a woman who refuses to be the victim. It is a playful powerhouse of a performance; brittle yet open, witty and attractive. Since Basic Instinct, pretty much every Verehoven film has had a strong, sexually confident, multi faceted female lead front and centre (Starship Troopers aside but that had its own discordant agenda). Let’s hope we get at least another one from him now he enters disgraceful old age.

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