Synopsis: A woman is raped in her own home. She gets up, cleans up. Then she decides to find the rapist, but she has no revenge in mind. Then what?
Opinion: That's my favorite. Unconditional top line. First, it's style. Unique, subdued, graceful, true French style, without which this film looked, frankly, dirty. Secondly, this is an incomparable plot and play by Isabelle Huppert (I remember her as the heroine of reincarnations from the movie “Eight Women”). The plot could come up and twist, and promote, and not lose the interest of the audience, only genius. It's confusing, but there's no other way. And Isabelle Huppert! It's unique. Her expressions, her look, her slightly protruding upper lip - who would have thought that this Woman was 63 years old! Again, French charm and style. And again, as in "The Childhood of a Leader" - a drama, a dark past that does not allow normal existence in the present. Secret vices, passions, hatred and desire. What could be more interesting? The film is very modern, very open, if you look closely. It is shot in light colors, in which dark people meet. And it's fascinating.
Verdict: Viewing is mandatory. Don’t worry about languid girls – the film is not for the faint of heart. Who says masterpieces have to be sweet?
It is difficult to argue with how much a huge contribution to world cinema was made by the famous Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. In fact, as well as overestimate the indescribable quality of his work. Starting with the classic erotic thriller “Basic Instinct” and ending with a tough banter over society in the face of the fantastic action movie “Star Troops”. Taking into account the fact that over the past ten years the director shot only two pictures, a priori drew attention to this work of the director. Not in vain at all.
It is nice to realize that even after so many years, the director of the film Paul Verhoeven turns out to be true to his author’s vision, director’s handwriting and even a sense of humor. Hence, it is not surprising that instead of another mainstream thriller, we get another satire and banter from the great Dutch director. But this time, on the genre itself in principle.
It would seem that the film a priori has almost everything that an ordinary action thriller should have. Starting with an atmosphere of full gravity, tension and anxiety, as well as ending with ordinary plot moves. However, skillfully wielding all these tools, throughout the film director Paul Verhoeven repeatedly leads them in a completely different and no less unexpected direction.
If it were an ordinary action thriller, we would get another segment of the franchise I Spit on Your Graves. The picture of Paul Verhoeven , however, is something much more simple, ambiguous and controversial. Being the victim of a brutal rape, the main character of the film, not only “does not sound the alarm”, but also for the first time in her life feels free. Free from the many fetters, prejudices and public opinion imposed by her father's shocking act. Having become a catalyst for all screen events, the rape itself easily fades into the background and shifts the emphasis in a completely different direction.
When developing on the screen at once several storylines of several characters, Verhoeven tries to fully reveal the depth of the character of the main character, as well as distract the viewer from the most important thing - the unexpected appearance of the rapist in order to get an "addition". Just like Michelle herself, who is constantly waiting for the sudden appearance of the rapist and the need for him, as in a new sense of life. Let it not be so vital and realistic from the point of view of the inadequacy of the behavior and motivation of the main character, but it is Paul Verhoeven and what adequacy can we talk about with such a sick (in the good sense of the word) imagination of the director himself.
Undoubtedly, the main driving force of the picture is the legend and veteran of French cinema Isabel Huppert, who easily gave out one of the strongest works in her work. Striking by the ease with which Hupper managed to reveal on the screen such ambiguous, controversial, deep and not stereotypical image. And then, completely dissolved into it. It is not surprising that against the background of such a powerful game, all other actors are easily reduced to the level of extras and are not perceived from an individual point of view. .
7 out of 10
It is another satirical provocation from the scandalous and brilliant director Paul Verhoeven. Absolutely “wrong” action thriller, which has all the traditional tools of the genre, is something much more intriguing, complex, ambiguous and contradictory.
Oh, that Isabelle Huppert with her ambiguous and contradictory characters. It is difficult to show indifference to this actress, it is even more difficult to love her or hate her. How can you hate a true professional? Fearless, bright, charismatic and incredibly talented woman? At the same time, she plays on her nerves so that sometimes you want to launch something heavy into her.
In Her, Isabel immediately appears as a victim. We are shown how her character Michelle, shamelessly raped, and she, as if nothing had happened, rises from the floor, collects garbage, and goes to the bathroom. She won't report it to the police, because in this context, her childhood trauma is triggered. Her psyche was disturbed by her father. A serial killer and a priest in one person. Her photo at the age of 10 near the burned evidence became known around the world. Yes, this injury is often touched by something sharp, so you have to rely on your own strength to ensure protection and capture the scoundrel. This is indicated by the fact that Michelle buys an axe, learns to shoot, stores the best pepper spray.
The sophisticated play of the victim and the rapist, which is sure to be demonstrated, fades into the background, the identity of the victim, her life, and her relationship to this very life come to the fore. She has many enemies, just as envious and haters. But she won't eat herself and spit out. First of all, she's not a simple woman. She is a bitch, a careerist, and there is no passion for her career. A career is only a way to demonstrate your power, invincibility and success, there is a lot of meanness and cruelty in the truest sense of the word. But it was these qualities plus sociopathy that helped her survive throughout her life. How else? Such a strong woman has never received true love and support. Therefore, all this was replaced by sex, cold calculation, power, and ruthlessness in achieving her goals. On the other side. How could she forget about terrible extreme situations, if she did not experience them in cold blood, and even with a smile?
The best defense is assault. Despite her age, Michelle has eroticism, sexuality and charisma. But, nevertheless, age takes its toll, primarily psychologically. Step by step, it is shocking that Michelle is ambivalent about her rape. Invincible and fearless, she begins to provoke the rapist and succumb. In principle, she refers to everything that happens in her life.
Whichever way you look, she's a victim and a rapist. The victim of an ex-husband who is oppressed by a midlife crisis, but who she still deftly manipulates by reminding of his mistakes. The victim of a son who is either stupid or just very different from her. But, at the same time, she torments him, hurts for “weaknesses”, and can mercilessly humiliate him. The victim of a best friend's husband who only wants sex from her. What does she want from him? Same thing. And finally, the victim of an unknown rapist, but she's also a provocateur. And finally, she's a rapist. She knows she has something in common with that bastard. She's not perfect either. She torments, beats, mercilessly rapes the closest and loving people. He does it morally, not physically. And all because of childhood trauma. Cruelty breeds cruelty.
The painting is not for nothing called "She." For it is her personality, her fears, and the oddities that we shall examine carefully throughout the narrative, and each will draw conclusions for himself.
For me personally, the picture “She” is a negative story about life, told in the language of satire, detective, thriller. This is Isabelle Huppert, who in her 50s, is not afraid to still appear in the role of seducers and complex, sexy madams, who sometimes attract and intrigue much more than some pretty and young actresses. I also believe that a strong woman like Michelle is able to inspire the viewer not to panic, and calmly, with a cold smile to experience various adversity, from which many would already lie in a psychiatric hospital.
What a disgusting olive salad (c) Quote from the movie.
Paul Verhoeven is a flying Dutchman of world cinema: the Netherlands-USA-Netherlands, who directed world blockbusters, released a film in the homeland of cinema. The film was at a representative world film festival and deserved good reviews in the press. I confess that I watched, because the film is stated in such a genre as a thriller, which is hinted at by the movie poster.
In fact: the tape is far from a thriller, and not quite a drama, somewhere a satire on the modest charm of French, the sire of the European middle class. However, the picture does not look boring, two hours fly by quite lively. But, something does not add up, the multi-genre palette resembles the original, but not the most successful salad, the characters, especially men, do not cause sympathy, although women also get it. In my opinion: the main character, despite her childhood and adult walks through torment, a decent bitch, a psychopath and a manipulator, but this is more of a field of analysis for a medium-degree psychiatrist. Blonde Josie, the girlfriend of the son of the main character-psychopathic obvious. Somewhat undisclosed, mysterious, remained a zealous Catholic Rebecca (Virginy Ether), by the way, in the film there are both anticlerical passages and satire towards tolerance, and in general, nothing. I wanted to give the film a neutral assessment, if not for Isabelle Huppert: the actress demonstrates aerobatics, proving that she is one of the best actors of the Old World. A woman living in the shadow of childhood trauma, experiencing and in adulthood bumps, yes, what is there, violence and threat to life, steadfastly holding a blow and skillfully manipulating opponents, and simply, close people: best friend, almost a relative, lover, macho, intellectual, ex-husband. I do not write about the finale on purpose, so as not to scare away from any intrigue of the thriller. By the way, the film says that the crimes of LeBlanc occurred 39 years ago, his daughter was 10 years old, if I am not mistaken, then Hupper plays a 49-year-old grandmother (actress over 60) and this dissonance is not very stressful: the actress acts as a vague and obvious object of desire. I think Isabel would not be interested in playing a thriller in its purest form. With her role she coped, the film also
There's no way you can cry. There are people in this world who can only kill you to watch you cry and pray for mercy.
I tried, I really tried to find artistic meaning in this film. The artist, with his creation, tries to convey to us his inner perception or external, understanding of one or another psychological form. This creation did not cause me any emotions. Not so long ago I watched 'Irreversibility' (with Monica Bellucci). I’ve never seen a more ugly, sadistic movie in my life. Movie 'She' Paul Verhoeven didn't touch any sensitive strings, nor did he touch my dark sides. Absolutely nothing after watching. And the last hour of the film I watched in rewind.
Actors. Isabelle Huppert (Michel). Genius played. Aging from a black heart inside, and seeing everything in a circle in black and gray colors, does not allow love in her life and in the lives of those around her. A devil on women's legs. I think it was only when she was raped that she expressed her sensitivity. They are not born evil and cruel. One of the wisdoms that life has taught me is the ability to start with a white sheet.
My score is definitely low.
Thank you, Isabelle, for the brilliant game!!
2 out of 10
Isabelle Huppert is one of my most beloved French film and theater actresses. She is a brilliant actress and a true master of her craft. It is not difficult for me to praise her once again, because I adore her and love to watch her play. She plays most often in author's films, and in blockbusters you will not see her. For me, Madame Isabelle Huppert is one of the five best actresses of all time.
Paul Verhoeven gave me films that I love since childhood. Such as “Remember Everything”, “Invisible” and “Star Troops”. We must not forget about his cult film "Basic Instinct." Supreme A wonderful director, and I appreciate and respect him.
When I found out about the creation of this new film, I was looking forward to its release. Those who appreciate Hupper and admire her performance in The Pianist, those who appreciate The Basic Instinct, already know what to expect from the film She. Beautiful poster, intriguing trailer, mysterious story. I really wanted to see this film, and I was very pleased to go to its premiere on September 22 in Russia.
Meet Michelle. She is a wealthy, respectable woman, quite successful and owns a company that develops various video games. The heroine is divorced and has an adult son. She's the mistress of her best friend's husband. One day, Michelle is beaten and raped by a masked stranger in her own home. This event turns her life on its head, and a series of events begins. Rape awakens secret thoughts about her hated father (a serial killer) who is in prison for life. Michelle begins to see the rapist in every man she encounters, dangerous desires awaken in her.
Awesome movie. Everything in it is terribly psychological, and tense, and dramatic, and there is a taste of comedy, and eroticism, and an explosion of emotions, skeletons in the closet. The viewer experiences the most diverse wave of emotions while watching this film. If you look at it to the end, you realize that over time it can be appreciated again. This is the merit of Verhoeven. His "She" turned out to be one of the best and brightest films not only of this year, but of the entire decade.
Watching this picture, I did not think of any actress other than Hupper who could play this role so poshly and provocatively. This was exclusively the role of Isabel Huppert, as if the script had been written for it. The rest of the cast was very successful, and everyone was in his place. That was great! To be honest, there has not been such an interesting and difficult film for a long time. Paul Verhoeven returned to the big movie and made it spectacular.
This film is not for a large audience, it will not be able to fully appreciate all. She is intelligent and hot, with a double bottom and good taste for cinema, with stunning acting and a visionary hand of the director. The “good movie” is really great and I enjoyed watching it. Thank you.
"She" is an exciting, dramatic thriller of 2016 and a gift from the talented director Verhoeven. His cinema envelops dark secrets, embarrasses, hypnotizes, as if opening a box with secrets and vices inside us. The film is very multifaceted, and I recommend it to viewers with good taste at the cinema.
Shame is not strong enough to keep us from anything, believe me. Michelle. (Isabel Huppert)
No love, no longing, on pity, these words can safely emphasize the new creation of the director Paul Verhoeven, a man who gave us previously admirable ' Basic instinct' frank ' Shogels' brutal ' Robocop,' and the miracle of anti-utopia 'Remember all'. It seems that the film 'She' is not a film by Paul Verhoeven, since it is still necessary to try not to show anything in this film, because the film does not offer any idea, moreover, thickens the clouds and leads to some autumn blues. Catch the plot idea is not so easy, since there is practically nothing to catch the eye, the film, having begun with the suffering of the main character with the same snot and ends, bringing the viewer to the inevitable finale.
She is abandoned, forgotten by everyone, suffering all day from her problems, which sometimes becomes boring, from a measured life in her big house, where no one is waiting for her except her cat, her son, who has been living his life for a long time, and at this time comes an unexpected guest who bursts into her life like thunder from the clear sky, but as it turned out, she is not averse to such an invasion, playing into her game (Michelle) not fully aware of what she is doing, becoming more and more involved in this stupid adventure, sometimes realizing the balance between her reality and her own actions.
Verhoven did not shoot a movie for everyone, it can be seen, maybe even more for himself, although the meaning, because the vinaigrette he collected does not rhyme with anything. Shown here the story (Michelle) looks, somewhere even painfully banal, where everyone got what he wanted and for each action will have to answer sooner or later, someone will say that so she needs, someone will condolence, someone will just see nothing in it and forget in a couple of minutes. From Paul Verhoeven, you clearly expect some magic of cinema, since all his films have a certain charm, passion, love in their own way, but in his new creation, unfortunately, there is nothing remarkable for the eye, in the story (Michelle) to believe with a stretch, and in the end you do not want to empathize at all, since the relationship is built here is played and stupid, and the bed scenes do not save the overall picture, in which there is no energy and passion, but only senile cries of melogging /b>
The result, 'She',Paul Verhoeven, a film that disappointed, a picture from which you expect not a love affair at the window with a glass of wine, but something long forgotten old in the spirit 'Instinct', tense and vicious in one key, and that in the hands there was not less than a knife for an ice pick, because we just do not count on another, but only:
The film "She" Paul Verhoeven not just surprised, but struck off in the wild, shooting a completely "wrong" thriller, unlike other thrillers, and all the previous works of the director himself, which happened to see until today.
The laws of the genre do not even smoke, but already weep on the sidelines. At first glance, without any reason. The plot lines, stitches of scenes, entourage - everything seems to be according to the canons. But then there’s an incredible twist of story and you sit stunned, trying to think, “What was that?” And we need to think quickly, because a new episode is coming with an even more unexpected outcome. It was possible to adapt to this only far beyond the half of the film, however, and the finale of old Paul was able to surprise. Someone might say, “That’s black humor!” Think about it! No way! What made Verkhoven, does not resemble any classic banter, it is something completely new, at least in my piggy bank of a movie lover is the first such sample: something at the junction of a classic thriller, stylish poking fun at its laws, subtle elegant irony and sharp psychological drama. It seems to be all familiar components, but their alloy from the Dutch director gave an absolutely non-trivial result.
Deepening into the plot details is fraught with the temptation to spoiler the most tasty moments and plot twists, and this in relation to the viewer and the film itself will be unheard of pork. Therefore, at this point I am silent and only emphasize that during the viewing you will not be bored, because all platitudes, stamps and clichés are expelled from the picture immediately and forever, together with the inviolability of the laws of the genre.
And of course, Isabelle Huppert! Unmistakable choice! It is impossible to imagine anyone else in her place, although the lack of good actresses in France is rarely complained about. However, with all due respect to the other actors involved in the project (of whom, in fairness, no one cheated), the film succeeded only in the presence of Isabel and the plot innovations of Verkhoven. Hupper’s character is as unpredictable as the whole movie. There is pride, and irony after life disappointments, and complexes that are fueled by the psychological trauma experienced in childhood, and difficult relationships with people, including mother and son, and the need to be strong due to their superior status, and insecurity, and the need for attention and love, and rare femininity with charm in one bottle. In general, everything and a lot is mixed up in Michelle, so predicting her actions in the next moment and in the future is also almost hopeless. Each episode plays out so strongly, realistically and convincingly that even if the next scene happens without her participation, you feel her invisible presence in the frame for another minute or two, her play leaves such a strong echo. The actress found the role, and the actress felt the role.
That's all for sure. For me, “She” will undoubtedly be not only one of the best films of the year, but also the last ten or fifteen years.
10 out of 10
The film is easy, although it is about the hardest things. But this is the ease of a good narrator and observer, not a skeptic.
The director doesn't involve the viewer in anything that might injure him.
There are also no imposed emotions, neither normal nor unnatural. For example, scenes of violence are filmed on the one hand, not so frightening, on the other – it is not erotic at all. No "below the belt" strikes at the viewer.
What is this movie about?
About fear, external and internal, which can only be defeated by going on it alone and to the end.
What is the reason for the actions of the heroes? The director omits these questions as irrelevant. What will be the reward? The answer is there, but it is given, rather, to balance the plot.
The theme of the film is how people who are wounded in their souls live, how their secret desires are formed into a puzzle with a terrible picture. The violence that has once arisen in one’s life becomes one’s need along with all others, even if they are fully satisfied. It is like a sauce without which to take and give is fresh.
Play violence, commit violence, be a victim of violence. And finally, the ability to refrain from violence and make it a weapon of justice.
The film is psychological, dynamic and no moralizing.
The plot of the film demonstrates how childhood injuries form the entire future life of a person and how sometimes people’s actions differ from what lies behind them.
Plot.
At the beginning of the film, we witness rape. His victim (the young Parisian Michelle) drives us into a stupor with his reaction to what happened to her, demonstrating not only cold-blooded restraint, but also a calculated thirst for personal reprisals (without police intervention). Looking into the childhood of the heroine, we find an excuse for such "iron" & #39; nerves: as a child, Michelle becomes a witness (and an involuntary accomplice) of the atrocities of a mad father.
I would not dare to call the film a thriller (although elements of the thriller are certainly present in it), but in my feelings it is more like a drama: the director constantly distracts us from the search for a criminal, drawing our attention rather to the everyday problems of Michelle, her environment, relationships with loved ones.
Actors.
The main character is good in the performance of Isabel Huppert: a kind of dry, callous and unscrupulous bitch (as her son calls her), capable of going ahead, imperious, courageous and not following the circumstances, but at the same time unhappy, experiencing mental injuries and hiding them behind the facade of indifference. Laurent Lafitte’s play did not leave indifferent: it was a very decent appearance with such a kind and inviting smile, behind which their demons hide.
Overall, the movie got hooked. There are many points in it that draw attention to the shortcomings and falsity of modern society, transience and the coefficient of useful action & # 39; life, its true values. I can’t say that this is a masterpiece for me, but after it there was definitely an aftertaste and a craving for reflection, and this is already a lot.
6 out of 10
The trailer and annotation promised at least an interesting psychological thriller. It would seem - a lonely woman, a mysterious rapist, fear, tension. Indeed, the film begins cheerfully: a masked rapist, blood, screams and a cat watching. You wait for what happens next, as this story unfolds - and it unfolds: someone sleeps with someone, someone slept with someone, someone wants to sleep with someone, the wife of a son gives him a negro. . The rapist in the frame is not shown - escalates tension with lustful text messages and appearances ' somewhere near', and you meanwhile get bogged down in the everyday troubles of the heroine, her friends and relatives.
It's not interesting, it's not dramatic, they just live their own moderately flawed lives, unhappy in one way or another, but each in their own way. You don't feel sorry for them, but you wouldn't want to meet them. Feeling like a whining acquaintance came to you and began to talk about his troubles; you nod your head, hovering somewhere in the clouds, and wait for it to end. 'Oh! What a rapist! Yeah, hit that fool! Beat women in the face & #39; - you are happy with some action. It may be meaningless, but it is at least some ripple in the swamp. It is painfully dull all the action looks as if the characters are indifferent to their troubles, as if in a couple of years they will say: '. Yes, well, with whom it is not & #39; Indeed.
The film is well shot, there are no complaints to the actors, but after watching it, there is a painful impression: as if a friend-whisperer left, but left bad thoughts: ' I am not in the swamp, right? Wouldn't it be a good movie?'
6 out of 10
The sounds of violent copulation behind the scenes, in the frame - a cat and a rape scene. It was necessary to make a “stop, removed”, at least regarding the rape itself, which in a repeatedly repeated and carefully deciphered form for the viewer (he has such needs, she has such sudden desires, perhaps originally from childhood) is no longer of any interest.
And what do we, the audience, do with all this, sorry? With rape, a cat and Isabelle Huppert, who came here wearing the same heels from The Pianist?
Verhoeven, who shoots the best kitsch in the world cinema, has an honest directorial look of a poster Komsomol member. With unrelenting young enthusiasm, he tries to conquer different countries and master all genres at once.
Living in Holland, shot the most Dutch in the world author's film with blond demigod Rutger Hauer. He came to America - he became an exemplary American: he captured Schwarzenegger, built a robot, fought with evil aliens and brought a sexy blonde to people.
Now Verhoeven returned to Europe and became a greater Buñuel than any Francois Ozon. He made a very European film with the most European actress. And, as usual, from the heart, not that spoiled by critics, the Cannes Festival and the elite audience conjucturist von Trier, sucking his radical approach from his finger (drool, cut off the clitoris, pee in a wedding dress in a clean field, include Wagner under the rapid, "and I had so many ideas. . . )
Verhoeven never had ideas, but at least eat a spoon. And now he puts her in all this: in rape, in a cat, in Isabelle Huppert with her heels and a life-sucking vicious mouth.
The film is good, of course, but I don’t understand one thing: who the hell carried the old man to these galleys with a licked cold minimalism, a funeral atmosphere and a sluggish illustration on the theme of “their morals”? Probably wants to win his reputation as an author with taste (although, in my opinion, it will only roll if you do not watch any more Verhoeven films), to knock out money for this case and calmly shoot next time a military drama with an obscenely spectacular young blonde in the title role or a picture of underground hamster fights on the basis of a strip club.
In general, something for the soul, but without the intellectual cover, which in Europe covers every second, and the new von Trier is not needed while the old is still functioning.
Throw away these games, Paul, and return to your bright, hectic, soulful, warm and lamp-like tasteless flesh and blood. There is joy and life in it, and what joy is there in your new sinister dead?
Scared by the number of positive reviews to this 'masterpiece'. Perhaps, like me, someone was bribed by the name of director Paul Verhoeven and prompted to view this picture. I wonder how many sane minds could not see through to the end? I'm sorry I'm not one of them.
The absurdity of this film just goes off the scale and what is happening on the screen begins to look like a parody. Sometimes a movie is disgusting, surprising, but mostly one question: what the hell is going on? Logic in the actions of the heroes is completely absent. What's the message to the viewer? What are the goals of this film? In my opinion, to show how rotten our society is. How much dirt is shown here, you won't be cleaned for another week.
The film left a bad aftertaste. A grimace of disgust. Disappointment (in you, Verhoeven). I always put European cinema on a higher level, but not this time. 2 hours 10 minutes of ugliness disguised as a dramatic thriller.
The main character, it would seem to the victim, does not sympathize with a single gram. Does that have to be in movies like this? In my opinion, no. Until the end of the film, I never saw any motivation or logic in her actions. The other heroes are all defective, each has its own flaw. Of course, I have no complaints about the actors, they know their business. But, unfortunately, they are wasting time.
That's how I got a clumsy, crumpled, ragged review. Just a set of thoughts, not a complete creation... just like this movie.
I don't recommend it. And I’m not afraid of your disapproval, because an unhealthy product, like not to twist. .
Michelle LeBlanc, the main character of Paul Verhoeven’s new (and much-anticipated) film, is a businesswoman who owns a video game company. LeBlanc, it seems, can be in a hundred places at once: at work to put everything in place (including subordinates), to visit the mother, who does not put a finger in her mouth, let her do another lift and jump out to marry a young Alphonse, help the son-boltus in search of a new apartment, for him and his crazy pregnant girlfriend, to look to the new passion of the ex-husband, in order to personally make sure of her youth and attractiveness, to disown a maniac father, and also to meet a lover who is even better than her husband. LeBlanc copes well with the madness surrounding her, and everything would be fine, but only once a stranger breaks into her house and rapes in the light of day, beating along the way. The woman, for reasons of events of the past days, does not inform the police, only changes the locks in the house, stores a noble axe and pepper spray, in parallel eliminating bruises with cosmetics.
Verhoeven, after a long break, returns to the world of cinema in a royal way - stirringly stepping out and slyly smiling. The director is not used to working with provocative material (remember the acclaimed “Basic Instinct”). “She” is a burning cocktail of all sorts of savageries, abnormalities and other beautiful things, which are so in a hurry for all fans of Uppervensk creativity. In his new painting, there seems to be no room for embarrassment. Throughout the film, the viewer’s eyes will be rounded to the size of the imperial coin. But Verhoeven’s goal is not to explain how one should and should not live – but live as you like! It lets the viewer decide for himself how to perceive all those things that happen to the heroine and her environment on the screen, avoiding moralizing. He seems to observe from the outside all the most piquant and relevant problems today (not without humor, of course).
In Verhoeven, even the topic of sexual violence, which so frightens and shocks every more or less adequate person, does not acquire the status of “life ended so suddenly, but I would like otherwise.” On rape as such, attention is not focused - LeBlanc, as it were, at dinner, tells friends about what happened, without choosing expressions. It has been and has been, so let's move on.
Strangeness in the life of the heroine Verhoeven enough. For example, the category of “crazy maniacs” (if you do not take into account the rapist) in LeBlanc’s life is more than filled by the hated father – a person who is extremely mysterious, isolated from society to the delight of people and Michelle herself. Perhaps due to the fact that LeBlanc faced immoral monsters before the rape, she somehow takes this situation too calmly. And even the resurrection of the rapist in the form of SMS messages does not knock her out of her usual rut. She cold-bloodedly tries to figure out the man in black, but without mania, rather out of curiosity ("I'm looking for circumcised").
Paradoxically, it seems that this maniac does not leave the house at all, walks quietly and watches his victim, who is not the victim at all. His image is a personalized evil, which, no matter how you hide, where you do not run, will still overtake. For Verhoeven, the detective story is just a formality. Walking through the most famous moral pathologies today, he seems to tell his viewer that no matter how hard you try, no matter what means you stock up (even if it is a beautiful iron axe), you will inevitably encounter an external destructive force (and God forbid, not in a black mask). The only question is how you'll handle it.
“She” is not a tirade about the injustice of life, but the story of a strong, unflappable, but lonely woman, played by the amazing in every sense Isabel Huppert. “She” is not just a quality thriller, with all the ensuing denouements, which, by the way, and do not expect. “She” is a subtle, piercing, candid movie, headed by such a familiar, but still so unknown Paul Verhoeven.
This is a benefit in the good old theatrical sense. Under the anniversary of the prims, special material is selected, which makes it possible to admire the sides of talent that were previously manifested in obvious works. I love Hupper dearly and watched her with great pleasure throughout the film. Such she is glorious, thin, playing the nuances of mood. Soulful, in a word. her role is rehearsals from Shabrolevsky to The Pianist, but more softened, ironic.
The first thirty minutes generally look great, almost Bunuel's irony in relation to the whole bourgeois way of life. The thread of this director could not stand, I do not understand why the whole topic of the past of the heroine and her odious father is here. The line of a kind of crime and a half-thriller is also not sustained, and the picture, by the way, could be reduced by thirty minutes due to unnecessaryities. A number of claims to symbolism, such as with a dead chick, do not justify themselves.
Paramonov seems to have defined postmodernism as the irony of a sophisticated man. In this context, both the picture and its central character are thoroughly postmodernists. This irony leaves no room for “simple emotions”, and cinema, in fact, art, which basically appeals to “simple emotions”. Balance, intonation equilibrium is quite pleasant in many respects picture, it seemed to me, definitely not enough, but on benefits breakthrough plays and do not attract.
6 out of 10
Already from the first frames it is clear that Verhoeven is shooting not just a thriller, and certainly not a masterpiece, but purely his vision, and not for a certain problem, but for the whole cinema as a whole. Such deliberateness, to put it mildly, infuriated me - from Verhoeven expected anything, but such a frank protrusion of his talent, and even trampled paths, it is not inherent in him. This director always worked for the audience, although sometimes not for the mass, but he always looked for his audience. And most importantly, I always found it.
In this story, all the characters are absolutely negative - who is spoiled by nature, by the way, the degree of corruption is always different, and who is simply amorphous in life and needs the company of similar individuals. All of them cause only negativity, so there is no one to empathize at all. You admire the beautiful work of Huppert, a great atmosphere, but there is no real interest in the sight.
The only thing curious is the author’s rather bold view of rape. I have never seen such a detached attitude towards such an atrocity. This is just a sexual act, often imposed, but whether it is forced or not, it depends on the victim. Some people even like rudeness. Women are mysterious creatures and everything depends on sexual preferences, as well as on the mood - you look and you will get pleasure. This is a superficial vision, Verhoeven came out even more easily and at ease. Interesting.
The film is difficult to recommend for viewing, because from Verhoeven you expect a product, not a piece of art. I hate it when they make something more out of cinema, making curts towards their rich nature. Although it turned out intriguingly curious, but expected something quite more.
In Paul Verhoeven's new film, it is almost impossible to see anything good in any of his characters. A state of internal shock, and sometimes disgust accompanied by a two-hour procession almost without any respite, but it is worth admitting that this adventure is damn interesting to watch?
The plot of the film is literally assembled from several mini-stories - the story of the main character's relationship with her ex-husband, with her unambitious son, with her friend of youth, with her neighbors, co-workers, mother and, in fact, the main antagonist hero - a rapist. Each of these pieces of the plot deserves separate attention, each story develops de facto in parallel, and although all the characters intersect with each other constantly, Michelle in all these miniature stories appears in different ways.
Perhaps the main character is the very center of gravity of the film Paul Verhoeven, which ambitiously presents the viewer with a delicacy called "She". Izabel Hupper withstood an extremely difficult test, two hours of presence in the frame, two hours of internal contradiction for the viewer.
Each of the characters of the film can be discussed for a long time and in detail, I would only like to note that despite the cruelty, violence, and sometimes immorality of the characters, the film looks in one breath. As a result, I do not want to call this film scandalous, because in fact it does not throw any match in bed, but it is certainly daring and for fans of the genre should be interesting.
8 out of 10
The release of the film ' She' I waited quite a long time and was looking forward to a good and unpredictable thriller. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met, even to put it mildly. The film disappointed in almost every aspect. Perhaps, I should immediately say a few words about the plot, or rather about its performance in the film. The plot and the idea of the film in principle quite good and should be intriguing, but in the film there is no intrigue, and not only her. The description of the film was lengthy and I wanted to see it as quickly as possible, but when watching it, I had the impression that I was watching a slightly different film, since the plot in the film slightly does not match the description. Instead of a high-quality thriller, we are shown a cheap drama without any worries to the main character, but rather vice versa. In the film there were quite a lot of stupid and illogical moments, and what is only the moment with a newborn child, or rather with his skin color and stupid behavior of the father, or rather his misunderstanding, but I will not emphasize this.
The main character did not like it at all, there were tense moments, but there were almost no emotions on her face, and the game itself is not impressive, this applies to almost the entire cast. Because of this, the atmosphere in the film is not conveyed in the best form. And the film itself is quite long, you could safely cut 20-30 minutes. The ending of the film also did not like, illogical and ridiculous, as in my opinion.
But its advantages in the film are also present. The musical accompaniment is quite good and in some situations it gave the film color. It is also worth saying that the beginning of the film was promising and the first 20 minutes was even interesting to watch, but then everything began to decline. The film itself is one time and does not leave any emotions after watching, except for thinking about the stupid moments in this picture.
4.5 out of 10
10 years later. He's back. Returned with a new film 'must see' year. The film is not for a mass audience. Not everyone will understand, not everyone will like. But we have to see. It is necessary to see Europe as it is, to see the bourgeois strata of society, their external and secret. Strong women, weak men. That's what we've been fighting for since 1848. Now a woman is successful, maybe rich, solves problems as well as men. In addition to this, he has a former loser husband, a rag-son. Although it may be dreaming of home coziness, co-preparation for Christmas, like a neighbor’s family opposite and a family dinner on Christmas. Deep down, being a bit like a devout Catholic neighbor. But the heroine has no choice. She lives in society and has to move. Otherwise, she will fall out of this society. Be a bitch, run a business and have no emotions. She has a job, she doesn't have much time. She doesn't know her son. No family. Only casual connections. Many viewers will say a lot of unpleasant words about the heroine, but let’s not be hypocritical, gentlemen. It is as if no one has secret desires, has forgiveness for all, and prays for the night. ' Every man has desires which he does not communicate to others, and desires in which he does not even confess to himself.39 At the same time, obedient Catholics slaughter the inhabitants of the city. They lead the same hypocritical life, have their own vices and desires as She.
There are many symbols in the film: a fire that burns, cleanses, heats, illuminates, but at the same time can cause pain and kill. She's getting a little better, she's getting a little more right, but she's going to go back into society, and society will absorb her again. This will always be the case. In the Bible, the story of the “three boys in the furnace of fire” must be based on truth, and according to the verse in Isaiah, “If you walk through fire, you will not be burned; and the flame will not burn you” (43:2); the wind is like the wind of hope and change. The neighbor across the street is like a dream. He has his own dreams and secrets and vices. But there's something in common. In the third book of Kings, the prophet Elijah said, “And behold, the Lord will pass away, and a great and strong wind will tear the mountains and curl the rocks before the Lord, but not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake, but not in an earthquake, the Lord; after the earthquake, fire, but not in fire; after the fire, the wind is still, [there is the Lord]...” (19:11-13). There was an earthquake in childhood, there was fire and the wind came.
- Wilde Cat. I'd like to make it back to New York.
- So you're a pilot?
- No, just a dream.
'She' is a new film with a talking title (or not very speaking...). Reading the description instantly captures and arouses curiosity in the viewer. It is impossible not to mention the famous composition of this picture: the inimitable Isabelle Huppert and the interesting Paul Verhoeven. Looking at some old pictures with this actress, I got the impression that this actress is shot only in the best and most interesting films. And the description - well, not an exciting thriller with elements of violence and the life of a woman after this terrible event - rape. Then why did this movie provoke the desire to write a neutral, and not positive, review?
With every minute of the film, I was simultaneously drawn into the storyline, and at the same time sat waiting ' well, when? Dear moviegoer, you have no idea how long that wait has been. After the first hour of the film, there was a misunderstanding of what else could be placed in the remaining timekeeping time. And the exposure of the rapist did not save the plot, alas.
I would like to express special gratitude to the composer and the people responsible for the sound editing. The intensity of passion during the scene of violence was emphasized by musical effects that really pleased the mind.
What I would like to say in this short review is this: Don’t judge actors by one movie! There was obviously little room for Isabelle in this picture. There was some depression and a special state of the character in her play, but one actress cannot pull the entire film on one herself!
I hope the next picture with Isabelle Huppert in the title role will be much better and more impressive!
5 out of 10
The first scene is a rape being watched by a cat. It is somewhat puzzling that the heroine does not call the police, but instead goes to the bathroom. And although the bathroom, under these circumstances, may be more justified than the police, the emotional detachment of the heroine is difficult to attribute only to the shock of trauma. However, the questions that arise from the viewer are removed one by one, not having time to accumulate much. We will be told and told everything.
The picture is as if in three parallel layers.
Finding a rapist. At first, the viewer, along with the heroine, is included in the quiz, trying to answer the question: “Well, which one?” Quickly realizing that most likely, the villain knows the victim, we peer into her environment, trying to get ahead of the heroine in solving the puzzle. This line, in fact, allows us to attribute the film to the genre of a thriller. The least interesting, in my opinion, line. As the movie progresses, it doesn’t matter who it was. And it's not hard to guess. All on the surface. “She” is as much a thriller as “Crime and Punishment” is a detective. And Verkhoven’s goals are akin to those that Dostoevsky solved when he packaged deep ideas into the wrapper of criminal fiction. It does not seem that the director somehow seriously cares about how to confuse the viewer or create a suspense atmosphere, catching up with more horror. On the contrary, even in the most dramatic places, laughs can be heard in the hall. It seems that Verhoeven himself is ironic about the formal canvas of what is happening.
The story of the heroine. This line is much more interesting. Pieces of a puzzle from a woman’s past life gradually add up to a long-standing newspaper snapshot. We see a girl about ten years old, in a T-shirt and panties, covered with soot and ashes, with a detached, as if otherworldly look. (This is how Terekhov looks in Tarkovsky’s Mirror before cutting off a chicken’s head.) This girl had just helped her father burn their carpets and furniture at the stake, just after he had massacred the neighborhood houses. And we understand that the main violence in this house was committed much earlier. That's what Dad got. And then there's the mother, a sexually active lady with the face of a Botox mummy. (Although you're filming with David Lynch now.)
- What would you say if I married again?
- It's simple. I'll kill you.
Society. The main tension in the picture is not the search for a rapist, and not even the notorious conflict of fathers and children, but the contradiction between the facade and the underside of society that runs through all the cracks. Fake smiles, kisses past cheeks, chirping talk about nothing, hypocritical prayer, ostentatious piety... Even the business here is selling air and creating virtual monsters. There is a feeling of some invented, and at the same time very empty in content of life, where everyone conspired to play their roles, although they have long forgotten why. Only death is real. But even she only temporarily knocks the characters of the movie out of the usual rut, and then, when the ashes are scattered, again leaves them. Until then.
Perhaps this view of the existing reality is a message to the world of a man whose own life, for the most part, remains in the past. Paul Verhoeven, albeit in a somewhat veiled form (otherwise you can’t gather an audience!), already has the right to say: Guys, we created a cardboard fool instead of civilization! Here decency is only appearance, and in the shadow of the layman hides a monster. ?
“She” draws only one word in her head, in large, black, bold letters – Decadance, and without any prefixes like “neo”, “quasi” or “post”. An absolutely calculating picture, like a novel taken as a basis, is more calculating than any "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." A decadent family in the half-life, frustrated heroes, sharp scenes of violence, a little uncleanness, a VIP actress in the center, and of course, a famous director - that's all that is guileless and completely undisguised shuffling. Naturally, all this is sharpened for psychoanalytic analysis with a taste of satire, so clearly that the analysis itself is no longer necessary. There is not even cynicism here, who simply saw the types of turmoil in the style of the era – “somehow so”, which lasts “somehow” his century, only to “fulfill itself”, and give sanction to another, making its way as always – trends, judging by which we are waiting for times “and so, and so and so.”
But the calculation did not quite work, it caused laziness, because laziness to move any thought process into idleness, even to get the aesthetic pleasure of laziness. This review comes from the opposite, as a desire to witness the laziness caused and thus overcome it. Of course, usually in such cases, when you are shoved cheap things at an expensive price - you just pass by, without saying anything, only with a stingy gesture you make it clear - "does not care", but here is a slightly special case. Cinematic noise and brand names inevitably cause a reaction, they are too noticeable, so it is impossible to just brush off and elude the shouting merchants by turning into the ranks of film products simpler, or more interesting. You feel some kind of responsibility, to which no one seems to call you, and at the same time you hear a distant call – inarticulate, but very obsessive. Something like internal censorship, suspecting itself of external leaks.
Strange, even some ridiculous situation, if it happened 15 years ago, there would be nothing strange and ridiculous in it, perhaps even all this would be interesting, and you would gladly start to interpret, remember the person who is usually remembered in such cases, would gain a foothold inside the work and enjoy the negatives manifested. But today there is no desire to show the manifested, moreover, they have not been shown for a long time, but they draw raw, but there is nothing to pull, the picture as a picture, the colors are in order, the plot does not lame, the structure is integral, and that’s all, let’s go next. Why is that?
Once upon a time, the rotten revelations at the Sunday family dinner table were truly surprising, opening the door and letting in uninvited chaos from the dark spaces of general decay. This chaos from under the accidentally fallen cutlery eroded human comfort and forced family members to admit the fact of collective death, confirmed by the dinner itself on a rare weekend - the desacralized sacrament of the resuscitation of the dismembered Mimir (cosmogonic giant from Scandinavian mythology). Forced to recognize what I did not want to admit, because it caused discomfort and forced to laborious revision of the menu of relations, ideally called for radical hygienic disposal of spoiled products, to refuse dinner in general.
However, Verhoeven, following Gian (the author of the novel), naturally forces Michelle (Huppert’s heroine) to gather everyone for Christmas dinner (a version of Sunday dinner), but not for the purpose of resuscitation, or even more so for the revelations of chaos, but for the sake of bucolic, where the participants decided to break the comedy for this time. Everything is very domestic, the chaos is tamed, he lives next door under the cover of role-playing pretenses, all attempts to pretend that someone does not know something logically do not get an answer, the characters are simply silent and puzzled like Michelle’s son – “so we all know why you play at revelation.” In the same absurd situation, the viewer gets, the film as if says to him - "why you are indignant, everyone understands everything, just look and pretend that you do not know, it is best to do it with the help of analysis, you can psychoanalytic, Lacan there remember, you can even Freud as you like, you can outside of psychoanalysis, most importantly do not spoil the evening, if you do not want, do not look at all, or pass by."
A brilliant escape from the breaking chaos - he himself comes to the house and offers the main character to close the windows from the storm, lets himself into an orderly world and pretends that he protects himself from himself. From now on, he is his own, lives as a member of the family, you can arrange revealing lunches and dinners every day, give free rein to your most secret desires, there will always be an extra device and they will be fed. What caused such unpleasant inconvenience, on the contrary, only added comfort (warm floor with their own hands). Even when the deviation leads to its basement, to that place of the gate to darkness, nothing really deviant happens, only a cozy tautology. It’s the perfect “unproductive community” that Nancy dreamed of in the ’80s, when chaos was a threat and something needed to change.
Yes, and everything would be so, and it would be possible to fix this icon as a beautiful fatality, if not for the relapses of Michelle, who tried to spoil everything with unnecessary confessions, return the chaos to the status of a breaking threat, but, again, did it somehow unconvincingly, “unproductively” effectively, introducing everyone, including the viewer, into a slight smiley bewilderment. The devalued impulses of resistance to the inevitable were so untimely that they came out not even comically and only left a sediment, which prevented the picture from being executed “perfectly” and passing unnoticed, and maybe even ran into sympathy. The absurdity of the perpetually violated pretense, which did not really know what it wanted to pretend, was what confused and outraged. As a result, much of the film turned out to be excessively bankrupt, as commercially unnecessary character pumping in a computer game moderated by Michelle.
At the end of the review, even the bold letters of the word “decadence” go out of my head, not because “She” does not fall into this category, but because there is no desire to make any final judgment. The picture does not generate working meanings and the initial aesthetic affect, which took a name for itself, does not want to respond to it after the unsatisfactory results of trade (the name “decadence”). I wanted to buy into Hupper’s game and recognize as valuable what had slipped through Michelle’s unexpected, if inconsistent, indentations, namely, the need for archaic norms and even the hope that domesticated deviants could give them, but not. Firstly, such a confession would be too far-fetched, and secondly, even if it were, there is nothing valuable in it, since it returns to the closed pre-chaos era, to the same bucolic, only without deviants. Here's the exact metaphor - the film appeared to be a hanging picture with overlays, like a failure in the reverse operation. No doubt, a bad picture can be self-contained and beautiful, but it seems that it is time to rewind it far ahead.
And laughter, and sin, and the cat is the main witness to all this.
Thinking out loud.
Paul Verhoeven, in my memory, made a ruthless film about human values, and always gravitated to the theme of sophisticated violence, and giving the human dark side to the screen, and not mind breaking all sorts of taboos and taboos. An example of this for a mass viewer who appreciates good thrillers is “Basic Instinct” after which Verhoeven gained fame as a director who knows how to correctly combine eroticism with tension.
Personally, I have a cool attitude to Verhoeven’s works he shot in Hollywood, they are really good and some deservedly acquired the status of cult, especially his works in fiction. But I am much more pleased with his early works, shot in his homeland, such as the delicious and tragic “Turkish delights”, or the medieval adventures “Blood and Flesh”.
What did his last work, Elle, end up being for me? Immediately I will say that this thriller waited with a little skepticism, but in the end expectations were all met, and Verhoeven in his 78 years made a really witty film about a lonely woman of mature years, in which, importantly, he hooked quite a lot of taboo topics, such as rape, treason, circumcision, sadomasochism, mixed with the attributes of a consumer society, and their Verhoven presents audaciously and even with some brazenness, especially this concerns the topic of rape, which some impressionable viewers can shock, and make him feel uncomfortable.
Most of all, Isabel Huppert naturally surprises, who played her role with dignity, I can even say this is one of the most memorable images of this year, and such a difficult role, with which Hupper coped simply brilliantly, evokes genuine respect for the actress, as well as for the virtuoso Verhoeven, who staged for his years such a quiet, calm and peaceful film, shooting at the most painful places of European morality and opening the doors to secrets that the black, fed cat, the silent witness and the unspoken judge of everything that is happening.
Thank you for watching the movie! Meow...
After about 25 years of life, the short time of day during which a man may not think about sex begins to gradually increase. Once it becomes enough to look around and make a conscious preference. Alas, the lady in the seventh ten with a figure of 2D does not have as many chances as Paul Verhoeven wants us to believe. But it is she, the heroine of Isabelle Huppert, who becomes the center of libidinous attraction for a significant part of the male caste of the film “She”.
Why Hupper? The specificity of humanitarian content stems from the fact that there are more ways to interpret the phrase “Vasya + Masha = L” than the phrase E = mc2. However, the number of options will only increase if the phrase is pronounced with a meaningful face, such as Hupper. Internally centered, reflective, authentic, cerebrotonic with high self-control, she seems to speak and act thoughtfully. Such texture will give the appearance of meaning to any scenario. That's what she did.
However, Verhoeven reinsured himself and slipped the public anamnesis. Reminiscences with scenes of childhood violence are issued perpetually, with inspiring obsession. Hate your father? Maybe. But there are no serious reasons to think that the affect was projected on the entire gender. The heroine does some dirty things, but she is attached to her husband, even more to her son. So, ambivalence? Maybe so. But it should be remembered that abnormalities in the behavior of psychotic/maniac children are more related to the psychopathoid radical in their heredity than to the actual childhood memories.
Slicing in the course of the film of teenage fantasies in the genre of hentai flirts with the part of the public that risks moving to three, if not take up the mind ... The scenes of violence are cold and paradoxically reminiscent of Batman’s rescue operations. There are many conventions regarding the proportionality of violence and its consequences. The story of a son and his baby is the trolling of politically correct Europe. ..
But in general, I do not bother with ridiculous films if they do not pass my test for histology & #39; Remind me. The body may look rosy and appetizing, but a sample of tissue taken for analysis will indicate decay. It takes 2-3 minutes from anywhere in the film to see if this fabric or structure, like a mechanical nightingale, is amusing, but not touching. I do not want to offend fans of ingenious and other inflatable toys - no one encroaches on their leisure and the right to speculate for any doll what she wants or does not want. But live cinema broadcasts the emotions of the excited author. It's not here. And there's a good actress over 60, from which strain b-sex bombs with manifestations of neurotic nymphomania and some other mud.
Michelle, an accomplished, successful woman, is attacked in her own home. The rapist, whom she could not fight back, is removed as suddenly as he appeared. Michelle cleans up and cleans himself up.
Verhoeven does not add excessive drama, let alone tragic events. The smooth and measured narrative reflects the lifestyle of the main character.
Michelle will not break, cry, stage a scene or feel sorry for herself. In fact, in her well-organized life, almost nothing will change outwardly. She'll just buy pepper spray, an axe and change the locks. They will do what others would do. But he will not go further in his desire to protect himself.
A key characteristic of the heroine is her unwavering belief that she is in complete control of her life. Controls so much that even violence in her own home doesn't knock the ground out from under her feet. On the contrary, her life begins to play with new colors. And that's what she was missing. Michelle has family, friends, a job and a heap of commitments, just like everyone else. But it is so boring that out of boredom she begins an affair with the husband of a beloved friend. The only thing that distinguishes her is her father, a murderer, on life imprisonment.
But now Michelle has a goal - to find the attacker. Due to circumstances, she does not go to the police, but looks for him on his own. Moreover, the plan of action against the attacker depends on the subjective attitude towards him. The first assumption about the identity of the offender is due to Michelle’s personal dislike of the subordinate and, if true, would jeopardize her public image. An axe would be useful here.
But the attacker had nothing to do with her work, family or friends. Michelle knows him and has sympathy for him. She's shocked to find out who he really is, but not for long. Michelle doesn’t feel like a victim, she acts the same way she did before she learned the truth. She is so confident that when she is in an accident, she asks him for help.
She is not afraid to admit to herself that she likes it and wants more. Their secret relationship continues. Michelle doesn't entertain illusions. Despite her difficult childhood, her moral compass did not go wrong. It distinguishes the good from the bad. She is interested in this experience.
The concept of the whole film is in their last scene together. Michelle is physically traumatized (accident), but doesn't get everything she wants. The last time she looks at him, all she sees is indifference.
Michelle is returning to her normal life.
“She” is an example of illogical absurd cinematography, not in the sense of Bunuel’s anti-bourgeois absurdity, but rather an ill-conceived plot nonsense, a parody attempt to repeat Hanakei’s “The Pianist”. Filling the narrative with illogical deviations, Verhoeven seems to test the viewer for normality – how much he is committed to the modern politically correct world, which rehabilitated any perversion. Choosing the topic of rape as an unspoken taboo, the director, however, drowns it in a heap of optional details and secondary characters, weighing the shocking message with boring details that slow it down.
In The Pianist, Haneke, armed with the feminist logic of Elfrida Jelinek, tried to demonstrate how the world of classical culture frustrates the individual by rewarding him with the most ridiculous manias. In the film “She” the genesis of sexual dissatisfaction is not shown, although the Oedipal logic of psychoanalysis can somehow help to understand the intricacies of the heroine’s perversions. Hatred of the maniac father directs her personality, allows her to start in her development from the denial of the Father as a symbolic function of the Law. In this case, it is an obscene Father, one who has not justified the functions assigned to him. The mother in the film is shown as an insatiable female quite in accordance with Lacanian logic, as a nature-breakthrough, an inexhaustible hole that sucks into itself any resistance, the abyss of the Real.
Between them, hating the Father and despising the Mother, and the heroine develops as a person, herself becoming a fanatical mother, she cannot cultivate independence in her son and constantly accuses him of this. Surrounded by weak men, she dreams of strength and finds it in the rapist with whom she falls in love, wants him, not yet knowing that he is the rapist. She radiates a sick, perverse charm, she runs a studio to create video games, constantly advocating the sexualization of the plot motifs of these games. More than once becoming a victim of her manias, the heroine is still looking for a pervert father in every man, ready to give herself to him in a particularly tough form. This is approximately the logic of the evolution of the main character following the Lacan coordinate system.
But how disgusting to understand this intricacy of perversions! No Lacan can help here. Verkhoven, as in "Basic Instinct", tries to remove a comic erotic thriller, but the indicator of directorial nonsense here is noticeably off the scale: a normal viewer will not laugh where the author planned, too terrible, shocking jokes. Of course, Verkhoven is trying, like Chabrol, to create a “family portrait in a pig bourgeois interior” (as Andrey Plakhov once put it, analyzing Haneke’s “Benny Video”), to make a kind of panorama, a slice of the whole class, for this he needs so many secondary characters, nothing new to the plot, but from which blows a satirical flavor.
Nevertheless, despite the many words said about this film, including myself above, I want to say that this picture may well leave indifferent the viewer, who is not familiar with the mores of modern Western intellectuals. In fact, who is interested in all these deviations but Europeans and Americans themselves? Earlier, in the Dutch period, Verhoeven shot, albeit provocative, but still human cinema, about the awakening of a person in a cynic and a scoundrel through love ("Turkish sweets"), in the American period and now he is too fond of satire on the bourgeoisie, but in his films there is no ideal by which it is measured and criticized (Bunuel, for example, he was).
Therefore, according to many indicators, before us is a crisis film of an already high-aged director, who has nothing to say, and he repeats the main themes of his work, only in a more illogical way. Being unable to build a clear dramaturgy (although, perhaps, it is not his fault, but the author of the novel, on which the film is staged), he drowns the plot in a heap of deviations, which only a good connoisseur of psychoanalysis can clean up, but it is painful to do so.
In a word, the diseases of the modern bourgeois world can be satirically dissected only with a moral ideal in mind, in comparison with which all the ugliness of this world are visible, but neither Verhoeven nor Chan Pak Wook, who directed the comic erotic thriller “The Handmaid”, presented with Verhoeven’s film in one competition program of Cannes, does not have it, unlike the same author of “Ghost of Freedom” or the directors of “Illing Comedy”, which is regrettable, because the audience grows and dies, and the cinema, unfortunately, does not get better.
Paul Verhoeven's favorite theme is the animal origin in humans. And the futility of fighting this animal principle. The main character of “Clockwork” (1979) commits suicide, having lost the ability to sexual discharge, the heroine of the painting “Flesh + Blood” (1985) rejects good and evil, clearly choosing sensuality for herself. “She” in this respect is minimally different from the previous films of the director, only the general decor and intonation of the tape change.
Hypocritical smiles this time mask the rocks of lust, friendly feasts are interrupted by a rare illumination of sincerity, and the cat (or cat?), indifferently looking at the picture of violence, becomes a metaphor for the director’s condescension to all manifestations of sexuality. To soften the apology, Verhoeven uses rare elements of comedy, laughs at the philistine tendency to reduce everything to farce. The viewer, from this, can not be said to be funny, rather uncomfortable - even the cold runs down the back.
Characters repeatedly commit the same nonsense, dictated primarily by their superfluous - characters - reflection. Hupper, for example, talks to his already dead mother, not realizing that she will not be able to answer. The same scene is formally repeated in the episode with the deceased father of the heroine. Only a few words burst from Hupper’s lips: “I killed you.” Indeed, even death does not become a barrier to human hatred. How shame does not become an obstacle to the satisfaction of lust.
Paul Verhoeven was embarrassed throughout the film, and for a while afterwards. The picture by virtue of its ' unconventional' caused ambivalent feelings. Now to the point.
What's the movie about? God knows. It depends on where you look. Sort of social problems. It's kind of antisocial. Invariably, this is the main character Michelle, played by Isabelle Huppert. An ordinary businesswoman, quite a successful career, a son of a fool and an ex is a creative nature, and the former he is, because, apparently, in his youth, Michelle liked his expressiveness. Now we have a strong and independent... And most importantly, defenseless! These are actually used by a criminal. Roughly breaks in and rudely does business with ' innocent' a woman of Balzac age. And of course, at her age, there can be no talk of psychological trauma, because she received all her injuries as a child, when her father killed all the neighbors. Well, what would you think, well, of course, the police will not help the case, which means that the case is taken by the victim herself. He's also testing suspects.
In fact, the story can be grinded for a long time. Like the character of the main character. She seemed to me quite mentally ill. A psychiatrist as a child would not hurt her.
There is nothing to say about the quality of the shooting, everything is at the level, but in some places it seems that the writer fell asleep during work and sometimes some scenes are too stretched and unnecessary. Acting on 9/10. There is room to laugh, there is room to think.
I remained neutral, as the picture did not cause 'AH'and did not hold 'FU'. A good movie, which does not spare time and money. Nothing to do is your choice.
A funny and scary story about a woman who was raped. This is an exaggerated description, but not far from the truth. The film “She” directed by Paul Verhoeven will tell us about Michelle, who runs a company for the development of computer games, part-time is the daughter of a mass murderer, the mother of a high-aged bogeyman who managed to find a hysterical bride and make her a child, the former wife of a loser writer, the mistress of her best friend’s husband, the owner of a charming cat and the secret admirer of his neighbor trader. Like all women, she enchantingly combines all this in one life, but then a stranger in a mask invades the house, hits the door on the head, rudely rapes and disappears, leaving the woman to clean up the mess, order dinner, because the son will come and generally have to live on somehow. The police is not about our heroine, she suffered from her as a child decides to deal with everything on her own. No drama tells Michelle everything that happens to her.
“She” is the first European work shot in the appropriate style and in French. The center of the film universe is certainly Isabelle Huppert, on her fragile 63-year-old (really?) shoulders holding a feminist-comic vibe. The old rogue Verhoeven not only hasn't given up his love of cruelty and on-screen sex, here he pitches it all under a sauce of hidden irony, absurdity and outright banter pretending to be serious drama. It is impossible to break away from the film, since everyone is distributed: men and women with their passions, perversions, stupidities, secret vices and oddities, young and old, children and animals. From the height of his age and experience, Verhoeven can laugh at everyone, but without malice, rather with understanding, without turning into moral teachings and without seeking to explain some divine truth to us. Still, he is a master of entertaining cinema, but what is nice to his films you can add the adjective “smart”.
Our main character with these steel ones flies from stage to stage, leaving the viewer to think about the nature of sexuality and the role of aggression and violence in it, about victimhood, about the desire for Thanatos, about acceptance, and much more. But all this is akin, while Michelle scours in search of the rapist ("Dress, I'm looking for circumcised"), but in order to take revenge on him.
The acting work in the film is excellent, Hupper can compose laudatory odes and make human sacrifices, all the others are also organic. The music in the film is a bit, the color scheme is muted. In general, Verhoeven did everything to drag the blanket on himself, putting the director at the forefront, pushing even the screenwriter, and the film only won from this.
“She” is a topical and interesting work, in which the leitmotif feels the phrase “And life is going on.” No matter what. And that, strangely enough, makes me happy.
Meet her, she's Michelle's main character, and she's not all right. The daughter of a serial killer who overnight turned life on a quiet street into a nightmare. The director of a computer games company that mixes death and sex, and the degree of this cocktail is skyrocketing. A strong, mature woman Dangerous. . .
The film opens with a rape scene, but is Michelle the right victim? Of course not. She won't call the police, with whom she has traumatic childhood memories. She can handle everything herself.
But despite her inner core, Michelle is absolutely a real woman. She is worried about her unlucky son, an unsuccessful ex-husband, a mother who has gone into all seriousness on the slope of her years. Yeah, Michelle's a decent bitch and likes to keep things under control. She lives in an empty house with her cat. In the very house and on the very street where the events that changed her life took place.
'She' like Paul Verhoeven's previous films, such as ' Basic Instinct' and 'Showgirls', excites hidden, repressed human desires. Here you will not find a frightening thriller, a hard suspense. But if you want to walk through the twilight zone of human instincts and morality, to go a little beyond the perception of the surrounding reality by a healthy psyche, then pleasant viewing