REVANCHE
The Austrian film Revanche, nominated in the best foreign film category for the Academy Awards this past February, is nothing short of a masterpiece. I have already reviewed two others in that category, The Class and The Baader-Meinhof Complex and will do the same shortly for the winner, Departures. At this point all I can say is that, unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon how you look at it, there is no question that this category truly supplies the "Best Pictures" worldwide.
This is a small film with a limited geography: there are really only about 4 main characters and the action runs between the red light district of Vienna and a very small village outside. But it's one of those films where the sparseness of the action and events acts as an invitation to examine the tense emotions about to break through the surface at any moment. In that respect it is very much unlike the two films referenced above which are all emotive dialogue and explosive action respectively.
The action circulates out from ex-con Alex (Johannes Krisch) looking a little bit like a tough Brad Pitt. Alex works, mainly as a driver, for the slimy head of a brothel where he has fallen in love with one of the hookers, a Ukranian illegal named Tamara (Irina Potapenko). On a trip to the country to visit his grandfather (Hannes Thanheiser) Alex concocts a plan, doomed to fail, involving a bank robbery, as a means of escape for he and Tamara. It doesn't go at all as expected. In the meantime, in the country, Robert (Andreas Lust), a cop and inexpert marksman lives with his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) who often visits Alex's grandfather.
So the film is about the ways in which lives unexpectedly intersect, amongst many other things. The film also gives us a glimpse of the repulsive international sex trade and it's destructive effects. Ms. Potenko must be given accolades here for the way in which she communicates perfectly the way that selling one's body for sex requires a disengagement, a separation from oneself that makes it very hard to feel. And she does it with a real economy of words and action. Yet this is really Johannes Krisch's film. He's the anchor and with his ax swinging he scares us with his hardened shell while we can still feel his rage and pain. Especially the scenes with he and his grandfather, which are not the least bit cliched but very authentic feeling between two men who have been taught not to express their emotions.
This is not to neglect the other two characters, because each has his or her own "baggage" as it were that we get a glimpse of. It's wonderful to sit through a film like this that is so careful a study of human experience, a film that is willing to show us the things we very often don't want to dig in and see, feel, think about. And to juxtapose the pain and feeling with the beauty of the country adds another contradictory dimension. The country is a refuge, a place to breath away from the insanity, crime and violence often concentrated in cities. On the other hand, there is never any escape from oneself, from death, from loss. This is what Revanche, which means "revenge" asks us all to contemplate.
Revanche opens in Los Angeles on May 8, 2009.
Written and directed by Göötz Spielmann; cinematography by Martin Gschlacht; edited by Karina Ressler; produced by Mathias Forberg, Heinz Stussak, Götz Spielmann, Sandra Bohle. Released by Janus Films. Running time: 121 minutes.
With: Johannes Krisch (Alex); Susanne (Ursula Strauss); Andreas Lust (Robert); Irina Potapenko (Tamara); and Hannes Thanheiser (Old Man).
