Paul Verhoeven has been challenging our expectations for decades. The Dutch filmmaker made a name for himself on the international scene with provocative thrillers and intriguing dramas likeĀ The 4th ManĀ andĀ Soldier of Orange, and became one of the few art house filmmakers to make the transition to successful big budget blockbusters with his distinctive and subversive voice intact.Ā RoboCop was a defiant middle finger in the face of Reagan era politics and rampant capitalism.Ā Total RecallĀ exploded the very concept of the audienceās collective Arnold Schwarzenegger fantasies, positing that the whole concept of dreaming you were an action hero was absurd and arguably psychotic. (And yes, he also directedĀ Showgirls, but even that notorious bomb has a dedicated cult following.)
This week, Paul Verhoeven returns with another masterpiece.Ā ElleĀ is a hilarious, serious, frightening and empowering story ofĀ a successful executive named MichĆØle LeBlanc, played with absolute dynamism by Isabelle Huppert, who in the filmās first moments is raped in her house. Verhoevenās film, adapted from the novelĀ Ohā¦Ā by Philipe Djian, then follows her throughout her day as she decides not to become a victim. Itās a rich and complicated work that challenges the audienceāsĀ expectations about cinema and feminism, and of course he wasnāt afraid to tackle the topic one bit.
I sat down with Paul Verhoeven the day afterĀ ElleĀ screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, to talk about the filmās themes, the adaptation, the casting of Isabelle Huppert and ā ultimately ā the ending ofĀ Total Recall, which it turns out is more complicated than we all previously thought.
SPOILER ALERT: We do discuss some important later plot points fromĀ Elle, and of course we talk about that ending fromĀ Total Recall.
Sony Pictures Classics
Crave: So what attracted you to the lighthearted, delightful subject material of Elleā¦?
Paul Verhoeven: Thatās a quote!
Sure, go ahead and use that.
Yeah, mostly I think that it was something that Iād never done before. I mean the thriller aspect, yes, I did:Ā Basic Instinct is a thriller and The 4th Man partially is, so that was not so new for me. But letās say, the enormous importance of the other characters. The whole social environment of her, thereās something like that, thatās seen in the most pleasant way during the Christmas party where all these people, you know already enough about their backgrounds to realize how they are and how they treat each other. To do something like that. Things that Woody Allen and Barry Levinson have done. But I mean, and then to contrast that with the really harsh, basically, violence of the rape.
Itās weird. I thought that if you took out the whole subplot of the father and the horrifying sexual assault, you have a light comedy on your hands.
Mmm-hmm. But you would not have that character. I mean the character basically makes this scene interesting of course. Her character. That character that is defined in the beginning by, in fact, a woman on the floor. You donāt see the rape in the beginning in it, you see the aftermath of the rape. You hear it but you donāt see it. Then you see her on the floor, then she comes up a little bit, and then next shot, you cut to all the things that are broken as she basically is collecting them and throwing them in the bucket.
Sheās just going about her day at that pointā¦
She does that, boom, then she goes into the bath. There is blood coming out of her vagina. She does the foam like that [brushes away the foam], itās gone. And then she orders sushi. Now thatās character!
That is really what I thought was so interesting. Of course itās not done exactly like that in the novel but thatās how David Birke and I felt that we, taking all the elements that we knew about her that [Philippe] Djian writes as completely disassociative; [a] little information here, next page there, so you have to put it together. You make scenes. But I felt to construct that character, [sheās]Ā constructed in two, three minutes. I thought to have that character throughout the movie, I think all the relationships she has are really tense. And I would say because it is that character itās funny. If she would have been quote-unquote normal I donāt think you would be smiling. Itās her confrontational attitude about everything.
Itās interesting, this film is being discussed as a ārape-and-revengeā movie, which is its own genre, and yet I watched it and I realized that this is not that, at all.
No, itās not, no.
This movie asks you to accept a lot of different contradictions.
Sure.
I admired that, that you can experience this horrible thing and then moveĀ on. Or that you can sleep with your best friendās husband and still manage to salvage that relationship.
Yes, it happens in life. Itās life. These things happen of course. Letās say a rape on the one side, and sleeping with your husband of your best friend, basically. In real life these are things that are happening. So I think I didnāt want it to be āgenre.ā I didnāt want it to be a ārape-revengeā at all. In fact there is no reason to even look at it that way because there is a revenge, you could say, but itās divine punishment, huh?
Yeah, itās not the focus of the film.
Absolutely not! More her dealing with a violent act and not wanting to be a victim. Even as she explains to her friends, at the table in the restaurant, that she has been raped. āI think Iāve been raped,ā in fact. But of course we know sheās been raped. The moment that they start to show compassion she closes, yeah? She doesnāt want to be seen [as a victim] and she doesnāt want to be a victim.
She refuses to a victim throughout the movie. She refuses to be a victim and I think that has a lot to do with what happened in the past, of course. Thatās my interpretation. Thatās why basically you get a whole documentary about her father. You know what happened when she was ten. I think the movie is not saying what happened then is now causing this, you know. Her character is given in the beginning, later you might explain it by finding her background, but the character is already established before that, and we get some information that might explain ā if you want to ā why she is that way.
Sony Pictures Classics
Itās a sensitive topic, the subject of the film, sexual assault. Was that a concern while you were filming?
No.
No?
It happens doesnāt it?
True.
I mean, I think statistically in the United States thereās 1,900 sexual assaults a day.
I donāt have the figures in front of meā¦
I have them. I checked them. [Editorās Note: Here are those figures, according to RAINN. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem]
Okay.
Yeah, but a woman gets sexually assaulted every minute in the United States. That is four or five or ten times more car accidents or shootings. So I donāt know why the subject would be controversial. It happens all the time! If something is so dominant in society, why would you it be controversial to talk about it and see somebody that found a way to overcome it? So I think I never understood, really, why it would be so controversial because I mean, interestingly enough, in general basically female journalists are very positive.
About the film?Ā
Yeah. So the film must hit something that basically is through.
Sony Pictures Classics
Do you feel that the filmās personality changed when you moved it, from your original plan to set it in America, to setting it in France? Do you feel it changed the tone?
No, because it went back to the novel [which was set in France]. So itās a French novel and so we had in our heads, in the beginning, SaĆÆd Ben SaĆÆd the producer and I, that it should be an American movie because you know that SaĆÆd makes lots of English-spoken movies. He worked with [Roman] Polanski on Carnage, he worked with Brian De Palma on Passion, he did Maps of the Stars with Cronenberg, and he just did the movie with Walter Hill [(Re) Assignment]. So it was natural, me being half-American, to make the movie in English.
We did it. We translated the book immediately into English and I went to an American scriptwriter. So we were thinking that we would make an American movie. Then basically that fell apart because no actress in the United States of any name wanted to do it. So then basically we decided this doesnāt work, then by coincidence or whatever we went to France. We said, okay, then we go back to what was there anyhow.
So when we moved it from France to the United States, in the script, we changed all the cultural parameters of course. Itās a different country isnāt it, the U.S.? So now we went back. Itās not that we went to something that was not there that we had to find out, it was already there in the book. So we just went back to the original version, everything that we had changed for the American version. Now, reading the book, you can basically say āThis suburb looks like that and looks like that,ā so it was that we had to reinvent the movie. We went back to what it was from the beginning.
I think what I meant was, if you had made it in America, would it have come out ā even if everything else had been the same, ignoring the little differences and little details ā would it have felt like a different film because of the cultural context?
Sure, completely, and not only that itās about the protagonist. Isabelle Huppert makes something very different from whatever I can imagine in the United States, you know? I think, in some way, you could really say we were saved by grace that we didnāt do it as an American movie because now, looking at what we got with Isabelle, I cannot imagine that we would have gotten that. I think the film would have been much more, if the want to use the word, controversial if it would have been an American.
But I think the authenticity of Isabelleā¦ and Isabelle wanted to do this movie from the very beginning. She had already called the writer of the book [and] the producer SaĆÆd before I was even there. But SaĆÆd and I, we thought it wasnāt an American movie so we cannot do it with Isabelle. It has to be an American. [Laughs.] Then basically when we saw, not our mistake but our misjudgment about American enthusiasm, we went back to Isabelle because she wanted to do it anyhow.
But now, seeing what she did for the movie, I think she protects the movie because sheās authentic. Even if you look at her in a somewhat alienated way ā and sheās not always vey sympathetic, in fact she can be very harsh in the movie ā but Isabelleās acting is authentic. Itās really a character. I think that gives her a much more feeling of authenticity. Yeah, this character could do this. So I think yes, if it would have been American it would have been a completely different movie and I think you would have felt something completely different seeing it.
Sony Pictures Classics
There is a line in the movie that Iāve been thinking about ever since I saw it. Iām going to paraphrase because Iām saying it in English: āShame never stopped anybody from doing anything.ā That is a fascinating concept and I donāt think anyone really talks about it.
She says it [to] her best friend that sheās basically betraying, of course, at that point, who talks about shame. She was sniffing around if her husband had an affair in that scene. But sheās talking about herself, as youāre saying. āAll the shame that I feel, what Iām doing to you by fucking your husband, it didnāt prevent me from doing it in the first place.ā
I wonder sometimes if weād have any stories if the opposite was true. So many people in your films, and anyone elseās, do things that they know are wrong. I hear stories from actors who say that characters donāt judge themselves, but I think they do.
I think, if I look at myself, I see that shame and feeling bad about it doesnāt prevent me to do things. Iāve done that. And then basically later you say, well, you know, there was not so great. Thatās what the other girl says [in Elle], that was really bad, what you did. I think the statement is true. Even if you feel ashamed, the desire to do it is so strongā¦ thatās what I mean, the desire to do it is so stronger than the shame that it brings with itself.
A while ago you made Black Book, and now youāve made Elle, and these are more realistic dramas than a lot of the films that a lot of Americans know you from.
Right.
Do you miss working on that scale, or is this entirely a superior experience?
What scale? The American scale?
TriStar Pictures
The American big budget, having that tapestry to play with. Do you miss that at all?
No, because I come fromā¦ I made six, seven movies in Holland before I came to the United States, that are all realistic and had nothing to do with science-fiction. [ā¦] People are really interacting and whatever, in war, perhaps like in Soldier of Orange and Black Book. But no, I donāt miss it.
But if the opportunity would present itself to do another movie in the United States, via science fictionā¦ original science fiction, not what we have now which is basically repeating, repeating, repeating, I wouldnāt do that. But if there would be, letās say, an innovative script? A new Philip Dick? If that would be there then I would do that because I am not against science fiction. Iām against science fiction that I feel Iāve seen enough [of], you know? For me itās like the same. Every movie feels more or less the same. Thereās more special effects than anything else.
And so Iām disappointed in the development of science-fiction movies, yeah, but Blade Runner and even Total Recall, though it was Arnold [Schwarzenegger], has an interesting philosophical point of view. Itās about something. It is not really completely free yet, itās really about whether itās a dream or not, and alternative realities. Total Recall doesnāt say whether itās reality or it is a dream, you know? Itās really saying thereās this reality and thereās that reality, and both exist at the same time. Because you look at Total Recall there is never a preference, letās say, taken by me or the scriptwriter, to say this is really what he dreams about and this is the truth.
So the ongoing debate about whether or not Total Recall is a dream, you think they both exist simultaneously?
I wanted it to be that way.
I have lost bets over this.Ā
No, no, no, because I felt that it was ā if you want to use a very big word ā post-modern. I felt that basically I should not say āThis is true, and this not true.ā I wanted ā and we worked with Gary Goldman on that, not the original writers ā [and we] worked very hard to make both consistent, and that both would be true. And I think we succeeded very well. So I think of course there is no solution. Hey, itās both true. So I thought, two realities; that it was innovative in movie language at least, to a certain degree, that there would be two realities and there is no choice.
You said āeven though itās Arnoldā but I thought that contributed to the filmās cleverness. When we dream, we fantasize ā especially back then ā we dreamt about being in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Even that, yeah. Sure. But Arnold made it lighter because of course the whole storyās a little bit nonsense. Because with Arnold we got, from the beginning, the protection of [being] a bit comic book, and I think Arnold is bigger than life. Heās not a normal actor, of course. Itās a charismatic personality basically out of a comic book, nearly, what he played at that time.
I felt that by doing that ā and itās not that I chose Arnold, Arnold was chosen before me when Mario Kassar of Carolco set up the movie, it was Arnold behind the whole movie. Arnold really seduced Mario Kassar to buy this script from Dino De Laurentiis in Australia, who had gone kind of bankrupt. And Arnold was the one, basically, that took me. Arnold went to Mario and said that the director should be the director of Robocop. So really, because itās Arnold, itās bigger than life or itās not real life, you could say. [Laughs.]
Top Photo:Ā John Phillips/Getty Images for BFI
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him āBibbsā) is Craveās film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week onĀ The B-Movies PodcastĀ andĀ Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on theĀ weekly YouTubeĀ seriesĀ Most Craved,Ā Rapid ReviewsĀ andĀ What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter atĀ @WilliamBibbiani.