Paul Verhoeven is as thematically ambitious, ethically challenging, impishly excessive, and darkly funny as ever in this, his best film since returning to European cinema.
Isabelle Huppert is amazing as a destructive narcissist who may have inherited sociopathic tendencies and impaired empathy from her father and who creates video games riddled with overtly sexualized misogynist content, even after becoming a sexual assault victim herself.
The assault sequences are not easy to watch, and I'm still wrestling with the ethical soul of the film, but Verhoeven takes, what on paper, should be terribly offensive and manages to humanize it, as well as give it an almost Hitchcockian air at times.
There's a lot here about the sexual and social needs of men and women and the consequences of those needs on one another. Open to debate is whether or not the work justifies its existence, or that we need a man to tell this story, but taking all that into account, Verhoeven navigates the tricky material extremely well.
The fact that it runs head on towards some pretty touchy subject matter means viewer mileage may vary, but personally, I've been thinking about it for days.
Isabelle Huppert is amazing as a destructive narcissist who may have inherited sociopathic tendencies and impaired empathy from her father and who creates video games riddled with overtly sexualized misogynist content, even after becoming a sexual assault victim herself.
The assault sequences are not easy to watch, and I'm still wrestling with the ethical soul of the film, but Verhoeven takes, what on paper, should be terribly offensive and manages to humanize it, as well as give it an almost Hitchcockian air at times.
There's a lot here about the sexual and social needs of men and women and the consequences of those needs on one another. Open to debate is whether or not the work justifies its existence, or that we need a man to tell this story, but taking all that into account, Verhoeven navigates the tricky material extremely well.
The fact that it runs head on towards some pretty touchy subject matter means viewer mileage may vary, but personally, I've been thinking about it for days.