Paul Verhoeven takes us to Elle and back in new film

Isabelle Huppert stars in the new Paul Verhoeven movie Elle. Supplied for use in Timeout.

He directed some of the most controversial - and successful - films of the 80s and 90s including Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers. His movies offer cutting social satire, plenty of explicit adult content and moments of gory violence. They also differ from the standard fare by often having a female lead.

"Women are far more interesting than the men," Paul Verhoeven says by way of explanation.

The happily married 78-year-old, who made his name in Hollywood with RoboCop and Total Recall before making Sharon Stone a star with Basic Instinct, may have bitten off more than even he could chew with his new film, Elle.

Yet the movie is a triumph. It looks likely to be the most lauded of his career and could well deliver his star Isabelle Huppert, France's supreme Ice Queen, her first Oscar. It seems incredible that the acting powerhouse has never won one.

"I've never seen an actress with so much dimension," Verhoeven says. "Isabelle gives so much and she protects the whole movie because she has this sincerity and I followed her completely. I think she knew the character of Michele better than I did and I leaned on her."

Isabelle Huppert stars in the new Paul Verhoeven movie Elle. Supplied for use in Timeout.

When Elle premiered in Cannes it was described as a rape revenge comedy, though the headlines sensationalised a story that is far more nuanced. It's about a traumatised woman, the CEO of a video gaming company, who rather than play the victim takes charge. We only gradually learn the details, as in Philippe Djian's novel on which the film is based.

"Philippe starts his book with the aftermath of the rape," notes Verhoeven, a fan of the book and of Alfred Hitchock, who greatly inspired him here. "We were tempted to take the American approach and start with the rape, but then we realised that Philippe had been very clever by not doing that."

Ultimately though it was down to Huppert who brought her own steely determination and wry humour to the film.

"It's not what I would call a comedy," the actress admits. "It's just that Paul likes to cover everything he does with a devastating irony."

Huppert is in almost every scene. "Yeah that's why I was never bored when I watched it," she quips. "I loved the possibility of being so immersed in a character. It's like an impressionistic work. You can build your character, little stitch by little stitch, almost like a Pointillist painting.

"One can think that Michele carries something evil in her, but in the end she has a kind of purity. The world around her might be bad but she's better than that. She's a complicated woman. Most of the time people are reduced to a social caricature. People think they know you because you are a well-known actress or businesswoman or whatever."

She hesitates for a moment. "I would never be able to run a video company. Those people are total foreigners to me." She notes how her son has ribbed her "that she has never played a video game in her life".

"Being able to find who Michele is, it's almost like a quest and of course it's unpredictable. Everybody would go to the police and she doesn't. She's not afraid of staying alone in that house. What defines her most is not her absence of shame, it's her absence of fear. She's not afraid of anything."