Laurent Lafitte wears a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso

Paul Verhoeven made Elle (2016) in French after a run of American actresses passed on the script. Isabelle Huppert plays Michele, the head of a video game company who answers an assault in her own home with an unsettling calm. Laurent Lafitte plays Patrick, her married neighbor, whose pleasant surface grows more ambiguous as the film goes on. David Birke adapted the screenplay from Philippe Djian's novel.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Calendar on Lafitte's wrist, in steel, looks like product placement, which is how the French watch press read it; Jaeger-LeCoultre has been a fixture at film festivals for years. The Reverso itself dates to 1931, when JLC built it with a case that swivels over to protect the crystal during a polo match, a watch made to show a second face. The Calendar version adds a calendar to that flipping case. On Patrick, whose pleasant surface keeps slipping, a watch that turns around to reveal another side is almost too fitting.