I rarely stand up and applaud a movie, and it’s even rarer that I “boo” one. But that’s how I felt when I finished watching Isabelle Huppert in ELLE, a movie about a woman who is assaulted, befriends her rapist, and lures him back to get raped again. I won’t give away the ending. But she’s in charge, sort of. I hated every character in it.
Which makes me wonder, if a narrative stays with you, does it mean you’ve experienced great filmmaking? No for Elle, and yes for the poetic/elegaic/hopeful/hopeless Moonlight, which has haunted me for weeks with its themes of connection, poverty, race bias, gender bias, and humanity.
Elle could possibly win an Oscar for best foreign picture. Ms Huppert certainly deserves one, and I heartily hope that she writhes on the floor and rids herself of the damages done as I hear she exorcised her demons in a past movie that she had completed. (Okay, you can see that I’m more Oscar the Grouch than Oscar award winning when it comes to THIS film.)
Of course, getting one’s hair colored is a different matter. Viva the Geo Palette, with its reusable plastic Clearview subsections and no ph-altering foils. Get hair color that stays. Color that deserves applause. Oscar award caliber. No “boos”, ever. -JC
