I'm a fairly sophisticated movie-goer.....and I don't understand what Paul Verhoeven (who's, "Showgirls" aside, a very talented director) saw in this story. Maybe you have to be French -- or at least European -- to get it, but couldn't the story have used a lot more work?
It's not really a mystery thriller, not really a character study (as the heroine's so opaque)...WHAT THE H#LL IS THIS FILM?
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I have seen a lot of French films and this one was a piece of misogynistic trash. Even the French hated it.
shareI don't even know what I just watched to be honest.
It reminded me of another Isabelle Huppert film that won a lot of awards.
The Piano Teacher.
She plays a completely fucked up masochist in that one as well.
spoilers
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I was glad that the rapist finally got some justice but it was in such a weird twisty path... but the 'heroine' didn't even do it with her own hands, she manipulated her poor dumb son to do it and he's going to have to live with those images.
But everyone appears to be living happily ever after? After a completely twisted journey, we get a sunshiny ending? the son and his gf are reconciled and rolling in money? The rapist's widow seems happy? the best friend is reconciled after Michelle was fucking her husband for 8 months?? And Michelle sails on, like nothing ever happened.
You're right she was so opaque, I couldn't understand any of her motivations or reactions, and she seems basically the same person at the end that she was at the beginning.
I was hoping to have some kind of deeper revelation about her part in that mass murder that happened in her childhood.
[/spoiler]