Paul Verhoven's films have played very strongly on the twin poles of Sex and Violence. And his latest film is no exception. It's a very direct film about how sex and violence affect a middle aged, wealthy frenchwoman (played astonishingly well by Isabelle Huppert). She's both victim of and practitioner of some of the worst sterotypes of sexual violence (as a top-level games designer whose work features creatures killing and raping with abandon), and a wildly human presence at the centre of many different plot threads (from family relationships to work to her religious neighbors to the film's inciting incident, a brutal assault).
It's a quite provocative film largely because it does not pretend that any one factor entirely explains a person and their experiences. Huppert gets the chance to be a truly complex character who can simultaneously be kinda an awful human being and a quite sympathetic one. It's a film that can be quite witty at some turns, quite disturbing at others. Verhoven captures a wealth of tones in a rich probing character study that is edgy, provocative, smart and moving.
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