If I were to introduce a “veteran screen actress who is beloved by fans all over the world”, you’d have a good selection of women to pick from. Judy Dench, for instance, would certainly be one top choice. But if I were to add that the most recognizable traits of the characters she plays are “unloving, joyless and cruel”, the list would shrink considerably. In fact, you’d probably end up with only one likely candidate: Isabelle Huppert.

It is remarkable that someone who projects such unlikable personal qualities would have had such a long career at the top of her profession. But there it is. The reasons for her popularity are on proud display in her latest vehicle, Elle, directed by Paul Verhoeven from a script by David Birke.

Verhoeven has said in interviews that he wanted to make the film in Hollywood, but every American actress passed on it. I would think Sharon Stone was the right age and fit for the role, and Verhoeven certainly wanted to hit gold again, as he did in Basic Instinct, which she starred in. But it looks like he’s gotten the hit he wanted with Huppert as the star. In fact, the role seems so much an extension of the qualities we’ve come to identify with Huppert, that it’s hard not to think it wasn’t written for her from the beginning.

She plays Michele, who owns a video game company that she manages with competitive ruthlessness. The film opens with her being brutally raped by a ski-masked intruder in her upscale Paris apartment. The rapist escapes, but Michele doesn’t call the police. She explains why when she tells her ex-husband and friends about the attack. After the tragic events of her childhood, some forty years before, she learned not to trust the police. It seems that when she was ten years old, her father left the house one evening and brutally murdered twenty-seven of his neighbors. Returning home, drenched in blood, he began burning all his possessions, with the help of his terrified child, until the police arrived. In the years since his imprisonment, Michele and her mother were continually harassed and threatened by people who believed that they were accomplices in the murders. But the police did nothing. With a fatalistic shrug, Michele says the rape is history, and should be forgotten.

But we know that she will not forget, that the film will lead, inexorably, to the identification of the rapist, and that Michele will exact her own form of justice.

If this sounds like a grim revenge tale, it doesn’t play that way. Michele is emotionally detached from people, which is convenient for controlling her relationships. It helps when she is having an affair with her best friend’s husband, in maliciously humiliating her ex-husband and in bullying her employees. Most vividly, it helps in her relationship with her weakling son, Vincent, played by Jonas Bloquet, who is living with a girl, Josie, that Michele and her friends call a “psycho”. In a ferocious performance by Alice Isaaz, we see that Josie treats Vincent with the same abuse that we can imagine he endured from his own mother. Big surprise!

While discovering the identity of the rapist maintains a certain level of suspense, most of the film is devoted to Michele’s circle of relationships, and this is where Huppert supplies the juice. Michele is such a dominating presence, and Huppert so thoroughly enjoys demonstrating that dominance, that none of the other actors make a deep impression. Alice Isaaz may be the sole exception, but it’s no coincidence that Josie is the only character that makes Michele back off. Otherwise we’re kept busy watching the cinematic action in the tilt of Huppert’s head or the famous corners of her mouth.

Verhoeven is well aware that the character and the actress are a winning combination, so he doesn’t overplay the melodrama. He maintains the right tone for scenes that display wit as well as an underlying menace. One scene, where Michele takes her family and friends on a stroll to find the perfect spot to dump her mother’s ashes, is particularly deft at mixing the two styles smoothly.

But his choices don’t always pay off. The business with Michele’s mother’s randy sex life with a young stud is just sourish, and his Hitchcock homage with a window-crashing bird is also a waste. These are minor missteps, however. Verhoeven regains his rhythm in Michele’s furious cat-and-mouse – or more precisely “cat-and-cat” – with her rapist, who is finally unmasked.

At one point, Michele tells a friend that shame is not a strong enough emotion to keep us from doing what we want. But it may be something like shame, or close to it, that prompts her, while sitting in a car with her rapist, to say the exact words that will lead to the violent conclusion of their relationship. Though well-executed and satisfying, I wasn’t surprised by what happened. The real shock came later: with what the rapist’s wife says to Michele at the end of the film. It was the only moment that I can say was truly inspired.

Some critics have called the film controversial in how it deals with rape, but I think that gives it too much credit. There has to be some seriousness of purpose to merit that term. When the late Claude Chabrol – who was one of Huppert’s favorite directors – made films that were small masterpieces of bourgeois guilt and self-delusion, like Le Boucher and Betty, the characters were tortured by deep-rooted inner conflicts that reflected, and illuminated, actual social conditions in France. The characters in Elle bear only a superficial resemblance to them. But, as I said before, the film was only meant as a vehicle for a well-known and fascinating talent. And it gives her, and those of us who love to watch her, a very smooth ride.