’Elle’ Press Conference | Paul Verhoeven & Isabelle Huppert | NYFF54

Director Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert spoke at a press conference for ’Elle’ before its U.S. Premiere at the 54th New York Film Festival. Paul Verhoeven’s first feature in a decade—and his first in French—ranks among his most incendiary, improbable concoctions: a wry, almost-screwball comedy of manners about a woman who responds to a rape by refusing the mantle of victimhood. As the film opens, Parisian heroine Michèle (a brilliant Isabelle Huppert) is brutally violated in her kitchen by a hooded in