Trivia

The initial plan was to produce the movie in the United States, but there were problems finding a female lead. Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone, Julianne Moore and Diane Lane were offered the role, but they all passed on the opportunity. Marion Cotillard and Carice van Houten were also considered. Paul Verhoeven later revealed that when Isabelle Huppert heard of the plans to adapt the book, she called around to express her interest in the project; when she landed the lead role, she requested that Verhoeven be asked to direct. After producer Saïd Ben Saïd sent Verhoeven a copy of the book by Philippe Djian, his interest was immediately piqued, and fortunately, Verhoeven and Huppert were fans of each other's work and had wanted to work together for a long time, so his participation was quickly secured. It was then decided to relocate the shoot of Elle to France, since there would be no American lead and no American company was willing to produce such a controversial film. Verhoeven also claimed that most actresses who had previously been approached immediately turned down the part as soon as they had read the script, instead of waiting for a few days, which is standard practice. One of the actresses said that she felt uncomfortable because of things that had happened to her in the past, and another didn't give any reasons but just said "certainly not". Verhoeven also told The Guardian that the only American actress he thought would have been game was Jennifer Jason Leigh (with whom he worked in Flesh+Blood (1985)): "She would have had absolutely no problem. She's extremely audacious. But she's an artistic presence and we were looking for names". Although Huppert had difficulties relating to her character, Verhoeven was exceptionally pleased with her performance, stating that she brought things to the role beyond what was written in the script, and that it was her film from the beginning, since he had only joined the project much later on her insistence.

Before the production began, Paul Verhoeven went to a Dutch language institute to learn French, in order to better communicate with the cast and crew. He said it was simply necessary, because according to tradition, making a French movie should be done with an all-French crew. He initially spoke English with them, but this didn't work efficiently. Fortunately, Verhoeven had once been to a French school in his youth, so he picked up the language quickly.

Paul Verhoeven said he had a great time working in France. Due to the French love for culture, he had much fewer issues with budgets and the movie's subject matter compared to the Netherlands and Hollywood. Moreover, he was pleasantly surprised by how courteously and respectfully he was received as a filmmaker, and recognized by several French festivals (including Cannes) for his "author qualities". This was in sharp contrast with how many of his Dutch films were initially received by the Dutch press, which was often lukewarm to bad. His biggest Dutch commercial success,Turkish Delight (1973), was even angrily rejected as 'pornography' by the selection committee of the Cannes Film Festival at the time, despite the festival's reputation of not eschewing controversial productions. He found working in France so satisfying that he is planning to make more movies there in the future.

Official submission of France for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category of the 89th Academy Awards in 2017.

Paul Verhoeven made the movie with an all-French crew which included none of his former Dutch crew members, except for his personal assistant Mita de Groot and editor Job ter Burg. He claimed that the prospect of working with an unknown crew in a new language gave him so much stress that it caused him severe headaches in the months prior to filming. However, these were gone on the first day of shooting, and due to the professionalism of the crew and their love of film, the production went very smoothly.