The man of all extremes
He inaugurates the 2016 Masterclasses and receives a tribute this evening in the presence of Isabelle Huppert.
A Dutch director whose films are strongly tinged with eroticism and violence (Turkish Delices, the Fourth Man) who makes a career in Hollywood making double or triple-playing blockbusters then crosses the Atlantic to make Elle, a transgressive thriller, carried by Isabelle Huppert at the top of her art? Here is Paul Verhoeven in a few lines. The filmmaker is often described by film critics as a « buccaneer », a « smuggler » who would have joined Hollywood to better instill in his big budget films (RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers) subversive elements, veiled criticism, food for thought, touches of black humor… all tinged with a little amorality. A reputation that seems to amuse him.
Interviewed last May by the French daily Libération when Elle was presented in competition in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, he hit the nail on the head: “We make films to communicate, to touch an audience, not to bully them. But hey, let’s just say I don’t mind being a nuisance.”
“Disturbing” is how some describe Elle, adaptation of a novel (Oh…) by Philippe Djian. In this thriller, Isabelle Huppert plays Michèle, a strong woman who is brutally raped one evening at home by a stranger, and who decides to track him down. An ambiguous heroine, a femme fatale and fascinating, and a role which earned her performer the best actress prize at the Gotham Awards in New York a few days ago, which would perhaps augur an Oscar nomination… but a story too full of violence, eroticism and amorality to be produced in the United States.
Never mind, the 78-year-old French-speaking filmmaker overcame his “anxiety” to “start from scratch: “I said yes to a film that I was going to shoot with a completely new team, in a country where I had never filmed, and in a foreign language.” Finally, and despite his denials, is Paul Verhoeven really a pirate in the world of cinema?
