Isabelle Huppert is arguably the only actress capable of playing Hélène with the requisite ambiguity. She does not play the character as a lascivious villain, but rather as a woman who is profoundly hollow. Hélène’s descent into debauchery is not fueled by passion, but by a desperate need to feel something in a universe she finds meaningless. Huppert keeps her face impassive, her voice a flat monotone, making her bursts of cruelty all the more shocking. She is a guide not to pleasure, but to the annihilation of the self.