Revanche (2008) Reviews

• The Bauer at the brothel, the peasant and the prostitute

  domnulx2008-12-03

  Revanche. Written and directed by Götz Spielmann. The look of the film is thoroughly authentic, and the Austrian milieu very convincing. Johannes Krisch is fabulous as Alex, the peasant brute with a broken heart and an uncontrollable sex drive. Andreas Lust is very good as well, as Robert, Alex's police officer nemesis. Caught in the middle is Ursula Strauss, who plays Susanne, Robert's wife. The story starts out in the squalid world of Viennese prostitution, at a tacky brothel on the periphery. Alex works for the local prostitution boss and he has fallen in love with one of the Eastern European streetwalkers, Tamara, played by Irina Potapenko. When Tamara is recruited for a promotion to call-girl, she decides instead to run away with Alex. Here the story moves to the countryside where Alex's father lives in a miserable cabin on the outskirts of modern Austrian society. But if the surrounding become simpler, the interaction does not, as Alex becomes entangled in the lives of the small town police office and his wife. The film is satisfying on many levels. It is a veritable ethnographic study of the interface between post-modern Central European human trafficking and pre-industrial Austrian bauern culture. Alex and his father speak to each other in what has been described to me as a rich and authentic peasant dialect rarely represented in film. Not only does it look and sound authentic, but the story makes perfect sense, too. And that's saying a lot for a European "written and directed by" film, where narrative logic doesn't often get more than cursory consideration. The name "revanche" has a double meaning in German, both revenge and a return match or a second chance, and it seems that both of these ideas are being developed throughout the story, as characters juggle their need to get even with their desire to secure their own futures. The tragic consequences of their every action lead them further and further down a path not of their own choosing. We get a taste of this feeling of predestination when the camera stops still at a forested point in the road, a spot that will take on fatal significance later in the story. Yet, if fate controls the characters' destinies, it is the strength of willpower that will decide who survives and who will fade into insignificance. Revanche did not get nominated in any categories for the EFA awards in 2008, but it is Austria's entry for the Oscar Foreign Language film nomination in 2009.

• Authenticity and surprise in a gritty thriller

  Chris Knipp2009-03-19

  Revanche is a deliciously gritty neo-noir full of surprises, so many important ones that it is better not to go into too much detail about the plot. But as important as its clever narrative to the success of the film is its atmosphere, which has a contemporary and positively ethnographic precision, but builds on the traditional contrast between city and country. And there is another contrast: between two couples, an ex-con and a whore, and a cop and his wife who works in a shop. The first couple is on the edge of Vienna and the other lives in the country, but circumstances bring them together. The action begins with Alex (Johannes Krisch) and his Ukrainian prostitute girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko) in Vienna. Spielmann rubs our noses in the scummy world of a whorehouse on the outskirts of town, with its Eastern European sex workers and its slimy fat cat boss Konecny (Hanno Poeschl), for whom Alex works. Tamara speaks pidgin German, but she's not dumb, and when the boss offers her an upgrade to call girl in a flat, she knows it's trouble and resolves to run away with Alex. She owes a big debt, and he cooks up the robbery scheme so she can pay it off. He says it's going to work because he has a plan. He says that so many times we become certain it won't. But despite Rothkopf's tidy summary, the outcome isn't so simple. The bank robbery isn't botched, but it goes badly for Alex, and also for a cop named Robert "When people go to the city they become either arrogant or scoundrels. He's a scoundrel." So says Hauser (Johannes Thanheiser), Alex's grandfather, an old man failing in health who lives on a small farm. He exists outside the modern world almost completely, though he does drive a little old VW Bug. People don't think it's safe for him to still be on the road. When Alex goes to stay with Hauser, it seems almost that he's fallen off the map that includes the prostitutes and the scummy underside of Viennese life. Alongside Alex's story is that of the policeman, Robert, who seems unable to give his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) a baby; too bad, because they both want one. They live in a nice modern house they've built, with help from friends, somewhere not too far from Alex's grandfather. In fact Susanne knows him. "I'll give you one thing: you really are a hell of a worker," Hauser tells Alex. Alex hides out after the robbery by staying with his grandfather and cutting up a mountain of firewood. The work instinct unites the two men in spite of everything, and Hauser's declining health gives Alex another reason for staying around. He also has revenge in his heart for what's happened to Tamara. But things get complicated, people talk,and that changes. Revanche builds on coincidence but in ways so rooted in gritty milieu and so gnarly and unexpected they really seem to emerge not from a writer's brainstorm but the downright mind boggling absurdity of real life. The word "revanche" can mean in German not only revenge, but also rematch--in short, a second chance. If Alex reaches a point where he can work out his salvation with diligence, it's much more quirky circumstance that gets him there than any pat change of heart. The satisfaction this film provides is delayed. It comes in the way it simmers and ripens after a viewing. Martin Gschlacht did the excellent cinematography. The acting is strong and convincing, including that of the 83-year-old Thanheiser. With close to a dozen films under his belt, Spielmann, who also wrote the screenplay, is clearly at the top of his game. It will be a real shame if US theatrical audiences don't get to see Revanche on the big screen. Revanche won the Europa Cinemas Label for best European film at the Berlinale, and has other awards, including two FIPRESCIs. It was a nominee for the Best Foreign Oscar. Shown as part of the Film Comment Selects series at Lincoln Center, New York, February 2009. "Revanche . . .has just been picked up for North American theatrical and home video distribution by art film distributor Janus and the Criterion Collection.

• One of the finest movies of the year, or the past 5 Imho

  cpurves2009-07-12

  No need to recap the plot as so many of you have already done so. What was interesting to me, along with the excellence of the photography, great naturalistic acting, lack of portentous music (what a relief), was the psychological portrayal of guilt. Who felt guilt for their actions, who did not. Obviously the piggy brothel owner felt none. The policeman was painfully racked by guilt...his panic attack was brilliant, the best I have seen portrayed in a movie. Then, the scene by the pond when the guilt was transferred to Alex was intensely moving, I thought. Even though Alex had tried to dissuade Tamara from joining him on the bank job, he was clearly shaken by Alex's unknowing accusation. Susanne's character was also nuanced — someone who was a rescuer (in a good way), her attempts to protect her husband while also getting what she wanted, were compelling. This, for me, has been one of the better movies of the year. Highly recommended.

• Quiet and Powerful Brilliance

  johnpetersca2009-06-06

  For the first half hour of Revanche, I expected something quite different than how it turned out. Initially, the movie reminded me of a Fassbinder film with corrupt and unsavory characters scheming against each other. The scheming ends with a decision by Alex (Johannes Krisch), a middle-aged janitor and go-for at a Vienna brothel, to rob a bank in order to pay off the debts of his girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko), a Ukrainian prostitute. The robbery goes bad in an unexpected way, with a policeman shooting at the escape vehicle and accidentally killing Tamara. Alex drives the car to the countryside and abandons it near his grandfather's old and dilapidated farm. Alex moves in with his grandfather (Johannes Thanheiser) and spends his days cutting and chopping wood for fuel. Repeatedly, we see his powerful arms pushing logs against a large, circular power saw. His becomes obsessed with work in an effort to overcome the overwhelming anguish and guilt he feels as a result of his girlfriend's death. Alex tries to become an entirely physical person and is sullen and inarticulate in his dealings with others. Other people, however, refuse to go away. A married woman, who lives nearby, Susanne (Ursula Strauss), visits the grandfather, encourages him to play his accordion, and accompanies him to church. Now things begin to fall into place, from the perspective of the viewer though not initially from that of the characters. To some extent, director Götz Spielman's approach is similar to that of Atom Egoyan's. Susanne's husband, Robert (Andreas Lust), is the policeman who accidentally shot and killed Tamara. He and Susanne want to have children but she is unable to get pregnant due to his limitations. He is as distraught as Alex over Tamara's death and does not understand how he could have shot through the car's rear window when he aimed at the tires. Without wanting to be, Alex is brought into contact with both Susanne and Robert and gradually reveals his situation to them. Susanne invites him over for sex when her husband is at work, perhaps hoping that his physical vitality will enable her to conceive. There are explicit, though not pornographic, sex scenes, both between Alex and Susanne on a kitchen table and, earlier in the film and more sweetly, between Alex and Tamara in a shower. Alex also encounters Robert as he goes for his daily run and realizes that the policeman is as upset as he is about Tamara's death. Susanne gets pregnant from Alex and swears him to secrecy. Life goes on. "Revanche" assumes it meaning, in German, of second chance as well as revenge. This summary does not do justice to the consistent excellence of the film's acting and direction. All of the roles are played in ways that are both believable and continuously revealing. Although there are superficial similarities between Revanche and noir films of the forties and fifties, their points of view are very different. In Revanche, we see and feel the devastating impact a killing has on essentially decent people.

• Journey into the depths of grief

  p-stepien2012-07-06

  A love in the underworld between Russian prostitute Tamara (Irina Potapenko) and bordello body-guard Alex (Johannes Krisch) leads them to embrace the perspective of escape from the harsh realities of debts owed to crime bosses. The solution to their worries is a bank heist, during which Tamara dies after being fatally wounded by a stray bullet from police officer Robert (Andreas Lust). Engrieved Alex hides out at his grandfather's (Johannes Thanheiser) farm, where he spends his days chopping wood for the winter. However grief turns to concepts of vengeance, when it turns out that Robert and his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) are neighbours. Starting off from a seedy, hopeless love affair, after a few scenes certainty of an emotional train-ride becomes evident. As the story unfolds and takes various turns, moral dilemmas take the forefront, as death, sorrow, remorse and regret construe a fascinating psychological story, where revenge isn't limited to a simple pulling of the trigger lacking forethought. As Alex, Robert and Susanne interact questions raised reach satisfying, if uneasy, conclusions, as a full circle is reached, making this one of the most poignant movies on the question of revenge, much detached from the typical Hollywood or Hong Kong take on the matter. The story has a unmistakable natural flow (partly owed to the settings and the camera-work), as happenings build the story without effort or forced connections. As if to underline this music score is done away with, only the noise of the streets and background of nature fill the space between infrequent dialogues. All this allows Götz Spielmann to deliver a focused, straight story without visual distractions or voyages into the supposed 'darkness' of the human heart.