Returning to his more genre-based roots for the first time in nearly two decades, Paul Verhoeven is finally back this year. Teaming with one of the finest actresses in cinema, Isabelle Huppert, Elle follows a successful businesswoman who is attacked and then enacts revenge in a cat-and-mouse game. While it won’t get a release in France until September, and currently has no U.S. distribution, today brings the first trailer.
“I had a strong feeling with this one that I was doing something that I’d never done before, which applied when I made RoboCop,” the director said last year. He added that it’s “a mystery story. Part of the film consists in Isabelle Huppert’s character finding out if the rapist is somebody she knows. But there are other elements in the story, about her mother and father, her son, her lover, her best friend.”
It also stars Laurent Lafitte and Anne Consigny, and you can see the trailer below. Also added is the poster and images for one of our most-anticipated films of the year.
When Michelle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving her 75-year-old sex kitten mother, her imprisoned mass murderer father, her spoiled and immature son, her ex-husband and her lover, all with the same icy equanimity. This is the approach she brings to the situation when it appears that her assailant is not finished with her. As the mysterious stalker hovers in the shadows of her life, taunting her, Michelle cooly stalks him back. What emerges between Michelle and her stalker is a kind of game, a game that soon spirals out of control.
Elle hits theaters in France on and is awaiting U.S. distribution.