'Elle' is a glorious vindication of Paul Verhoeven's career

Elle

Director Paul Verhoeven has a reputation for making tawdry and salacious thrillers -- over-the-top, masculine, sexually graphic and violent -- but he never gets enough credit for how subversive and funny his work is, or how elegant and exciting.

His 2016 film Elle -- in which Isabelle Huppert gives a remarkable lead performance, one of the year's best -- feels like both a culmination of all his previous work and something quite refreshing at the same time. And it stands as proof that at 78, Verhoeven has more energy and ingenuity than many filmmakers half his age. The movie is part black comedy, part terrifying horror film -- it walks a dangerous balance between macabre fantasy and utterly plausible reality; it really is a fascinating marvel to behold.

Without spoiling too much, I will say that the film is about an aging (but still stunning) French video game impresario who is the victim of an assault, that either changes her or, depending on your point of view, brings some long dormant emotions out of her.

The movie keeps throwing you for a loop. It works as a thriller, but also at other times like a mystery. It is bitingly funny, thanks to Huppert's acidic delivery, and her game supporting cast. It has the requisite clever, subtle social commentary that all Verhoven's best films have (this time he mocks gamer culture as he did commercial advertising in Robocop and Starship Troopers), but he may never have directed a better performance in his career, than the fearless one Huppert gives here.

Viola Davis still gave perhaps my favorite female performance of the year in Fences. And I thought Natalie Portman's work in Jackie was a game-changer. But I put Huppert's work here right up there with them.

At 63, she throws herself in this very physically demanding and emotionally complex role and although she dominates almost every frame, she leaves you wanting more.

For Verhoeven, whose trademark has almost always been excess, this may be the most restrained movie he's ever made -- and yet it is plenty violent, visceral and audacious.

Of course, many of Verhoeven's American blockbusters, like Total Recall and Basic Instinct for instance, have been reappraised as the classics they deserve to be -- but the director will perhaps never live down the indignity of Showgirls.

However, I have read a compelling case arguing that while that infamous dud is indeed poorly acted and written, it's not badly directed -- and Verhoeven may have been standing outside the material and commenting on it in his own sly way while presenting the film as if it were entirely earnest.

Even if that is a charitable read, only great directors fail that miserably. And even genius directors have at least one huge folly on their resume.

Elle, however, will be remembered as a highlight.