Anyone familiar with the work of director Paul Verhoeven should expect a potent, visceral experience from the innocently-titled French film Elle. Isabelle Huppert is a superb actress whose face can become a mask, hiding or revealing her feelings as she chooses. Here she plays a complex, often unlikable woman who is brutally raped at the beginning of the story, which leads her to make a series of unusual choices. There is no subtlety in the revelation that the heroine heads a company that produces video games in which the female characters are victimized—though never viciously enough to suit her. Huppert’s character enjoys having control over her male employees, a power she can’t exert as efficiently in her private life with an ex-husband, son, and illicit…

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