Revanche

Revanche is a film about escaping. Alex and Tamara want to escape from their destructive lives in Vienna where Alex works as a pimp in a brothel and Tamara works as a prostitute at the same place. The whole film has that European, uncomfortable feel about the cinematography and each shot is delicately filmed giving it a soft, yet voyeuristic touch. In order to get away from the filthy and shoddy place they both inhabit, they need money, so Alex decides to rob a bank. Here enters Robert who is a policeman. After Alex and Tamara try to escape when they have the money, Robert shoots to stop the car but kills Tamara. 
The film then centers around the struggles of Robert and his wife Susanne who have lost their first baby and cannot conceive another child because Robert is infertile. Revanche is as much about escaping as it about love, death and class in modern day society. I think an important theme in the film is moving on. The characters in the film want to move on in their lives and get away, but there is also the moving on from death and the reconciliation the characters have to go through with themselves. The scenery varies dramatically in the film with the dirty and disgusting flats housing the prostitutes at the beginning of the film which then transcends into the gorgeous scenery of a farm overlooking a river in the second half of the picture.
Revanche is a beautiful and emotional journey that the characters in the film and we, the audience go through simultaneously. The lead performance from Johannes Krisch is outstanding and we feel his pain throughout the film and we endure everything he goes through and everything he inflicts on the other characters. The film has a dream-like feel to most parts but there is something underneath the surface that is more real than anything I have seen on the screen for a long time.


5/5