When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.
Acting
Huppert's micro-expressions do more than dialogue ever could.
Direction
Verhoeven treats provocation as philosophy.
Writing
Every character is complicit in their own damage.
Director
Paul Verhoeven
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Verhoeven developed this for 15 years in Hollywood; no American actress would touch it. Huppert read the script and said yes in 24 hours.
The Christmas setting isn't decorative—Verhoeven uses Christian iconography of virgin birth and sacrifice to frame Michèle's own immaculate self-creation through violence.
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