I was wary of this film, anxious about it being overly violent. But in the event, finally seeing it a couple of weeks ago I liked it very much indeed. It was much more than the rape / revenge thriller I had been led to expect. But saying what it is not is much easier than saying what it is. There’s a clue in the title. And in a reference, buried in a small seemingly inconsequential conversation part way through the film, to Simone De Beauvoir who famously observed, one is not born a woman but becomes one through the gaze of the other. Isabelle Huppert gives a fine performance as Michele, for which she has already been recognised with a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. She’s in nearly every scene and is mesmerising.
There are a number of interwoven strands. First there is the rape which opens the film; short, brutal, shocking. It recurs in flashback, during which the victim imagines an alternative ending, and, shockingly, it happens more than once. She doesn’t report it, in part due to a somewhat lurid back story, more of that anon. She gets the locks changed on her house which, as it happens and in best Hitchcockian fashion, has lots of doors and windows! She buys mace and a tomahawk and later takes firearms lessons. She takes steps to try and identify her attacker. She tells those closest to her what has happened, but otherwise covers it up. So far a relatively realistic response to a horrible assault. I had been prepared to close my eyes during the assault scenes but I found it not as gruesome as expected. The worst thing about it was the beating accompanying the rape.
She gets on with her life as a successful business woman, producing, in partnership with her best friend, another woman, lurid video games; the thrill of the chase, crazy beasts, explosions, females as quarry ( the gaze of the other writ large). They’ve had one big success and are creating another. She wants them to ramp up the violence to ensure the target audience get their boner moment. One of the largely male employees is antagonistic. Is he the attacker? She sets another employee on the case to investigate. A lewd extract from the game with her face superimposed on the writhing female figure is distributed throughout the workplace. She is stoic.
Other bits of her life come into focus. She cares, despite her gruffness for her mother who has shacked up with a most unsuitable fellow. She has a son who she thinks is a no-hoper, also hooked up with an undesirable partner who gives birth to a baby who is clearly not the son’s, to Michel’s disgust. As she tells a nurse, she is not maternal, never has been, doesn’t want to be. She is acting in a way that risks her friendship with her best friend. She and her ex husband appear to still have affection for each other, but she reminds him, she left him when he hit her, something he has regretted ever since. She takes an interest in the next door neighbour; a married man, a practicing Catholic. She has a cat – who plays a small but important role – watch carefully. She has a Christmas celebration, a dinner party, at which all these people come together, and is suitably terrible to everyone except with the neighbour with whom she flirts.
There’s quite a lot of humour throughout which was unexpected. Some laugh out loud moments. Michele’s life is presented very prosaically. It’s all very realistic. At the same time as this very ordinary life goes on there are moments of great tension as you wait for something terrible to happen. And it does. And she goes on, not ignoring it exactly, but alone.
Michele’s back story gradually comes to the fore. There’s an incident in a cafe, a visit to her mother, a television program. We gradually learn it’s about something her father did a long time ago. It’s resulted in Michelle being publicly portrayed in a certain way (that gaze again). Her relationship with her parents gradually takes centre stage. It seemed to me that when certain things are resolved with them she becomes a different, softer person. Her business succeeds with the second game as successful as the first and she is lauded by her employees. She takes action to resolve the issue with her best friend. Having previously refused to do so, she assists her ex husband make a pitch for a video game. She is gentler on her son, giving him a job which helps him with his partner and which means he is there with his mother at the final denouement.
Which takes us back to the violence, to the rapes. What does that all mean. There is one scene in particular where she accepts an invitation that we, the audience, knows, and which she must know, will lead to violence. Yet she accepts it. Does this make her complicit? Is it the same boring ‘no’ means ‘yes’ trope about rape. This scene, and the denouement which concludes the assaults (but not the film) are almost pastiches of the traditional schlock horror movie scene: come down to the basement my dear. She’s even hobbling along on crutches as she descends to the basement for goodness sake!
I saw this film with two twenty-something old women. And we talked about it long into the night afterwards. What did this scene mean? Why would she go down to the basement? What did her reaction mean? When did she know who the attacker was? Why did she do that? What did the neighbour’s wife mean? Michele is such a strong character – right to the end. There is nothing of the victim about her. So what is the film trying to say? What is the relevance of the violence? What does it mean? We went around and around. One of my younger companions was completely put off by the violence and the ambiguity in Michele’s response to it. I think that would have been the reaction of the twenty-something old me. The other young person felt the film was all about what it meant to be a woman. Which was my response. Whatever your view, the film certainly succeeds in making you think.
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