Starring Isabelle Huppert. In French, with English subtitles. Rated 18A.

Paul Verhoeven, the former bad boy of Dutch cinema, is back with a deliciously refined vengeance after years in the wilderness.

Adapted from Philippe Djian’s novel by American screenwriter David Birke—who, tellingly, has mostly written screenplays about serial killers—the simply titled Elle stars the ageless Isabelle Huppert as Michèle Leblanc, a chic Parisian who runs a computer-game company with her best friend (Anne Consigny).

The fact that two older gals hire mostly younger guys to turn out violent games gives you some idea of what’s afoot in this elegantly creepy battle of the sexes, and exes.

Of course, the real tip-off comes early, when a masked intruder violently assaults Michèle in her spacious suburban apartment. The sequence is highly disturbing, and it plays out several times throughout the picture, sometimes with differing conclusions.

The more you learn about her childhood baggage, the less you’re sure about this event’s place in her life. Was it some kind of twisted role-play, and was the intruder one of the many men already orbiting around her? These include a bitter employee (Lucas Prisor), a moodily Catholic neighbour (Laurent Lafitte), her partner’s brutish husband (Christian Berkel), her own mousy former mate (Charles Berling), and—hell, who knows?—their ne’er-do-well grown son (Jonas Bloquet).

Michèle’s trunk full of personal horrors is tied in with her aged mother (French new-wave veteran Judith Magre), and our tightly wound protagonist has control issues that affect everyone around her.

It’s hard to remember that Verhoeven has never worked in France, as his perfectly chosen cast delivers a clockwork thriller with hints of Patricia Highsmith and Michael Haneke.

Indeed, Huppert’s riveting performance walks a tightrope placed almost exactly between her role in Haneke’s perverse The Piano Teacher and her more optimistically shaded lead in Things to Come, opening here soon. Over the fast-moving two hours of this poisoned Gallic confection, you mostly forget that this is the same man who made Showgirls, RoboCop, and Starship Troopers.

But he is, after all, the guy behind The 4th Man and Basic Instinct.