Revanche

I recently saw this at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Writer/Director Martin Gschlacht offers up a tale of crime and revenge from Austria in a good looking cinematic presentation although the story set up is a little long and characters you expect to return are discarded. Despite it's too long beginning the film never really lags and keeps your interest with it's slick story from Gschlacht and wonderful cinematography from Gotz Spielmann and a great production design by Maria Gruber. Alex (Johannes Krisch) has fallen in love with Ukrainian immigrant Tamara (Irina Potapenko) who works in a brothel where Alex does odd jobs for the underworld brothel owner. In a plan to get out of debt and the control of the brothel Alex hatches a plot to rob a bank in his grandfather's rural village. Alex is forced to assimilate into the village when his plan is botched. With Ursala Strauss as the shopkeeper Susanne and Andreas Lust as her policeman husband Robert this is a good film but would carry a strong R rating for nudity and sexual situations. Fortunately, violence is kept at a minimum. I believe this is Austria's official submission to the Oscars for Best Foreign Language film. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10 and recommend it.

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.

This Austrian drama starts as a love story between a scruffy ex-con and a Ukranian prostitute, but evolves into an interesting character study. It takes a while for the film to settle down and the central storyline to emerge, but it is quite absorbing. The acting is excellent, particularly Strauss and Thanheiser. Spielmann's direction is assured and marked by visual elegance. He doesn't use any flashy camera-work, but manages to infuse every frame with a sense of foreboding. The pacing is deliberate (about 10 minutes of screen time is devoted to watching Krisch cut wood), but it never drags. The Austrian countryside is beautifully shot in this low-key and rewarding film.

When his girlfriend is murdered during a bank robbery escape attempt, former convict Alex vows to take revenge on the man who pulled the trigger. Vengeance seems to make perfect sense until he meets his target face-to-face.

'Revanche' is a film that holds its cards close to its chest. Just when you think you have the story pinned in the first half-hour, all hell breaks loose and the film takes a wholly unexpected turn. It is a film that not only challenges you to predict what comes next, but one that forces you to decide whether revenge ever makes sense, to confront feelings of anguish and make decisions you can live with. In the character of Alex, we have a man used to dealing with the rougher side of humanity, which has hardened him in order to survive. The loss of his girlfriend Tamara robs him of the only time he allows himself to be someone else, at peace with the world. Into this world comes the unassuming presence of Robert, a policeman committed to serving the public, yet whom has never faced the hardest part of the job: taking a life. When Robert is confronted by this reality, it is then that we truly learn who he is. This, ultimately, is what the film is about - throwing ordinary people into life's darkest waters and seeing whether or not they will swim back into the light. Writer and director Götz Spielmann presents the viewer with a very compelling drama, which, through its cast of identifiably real characters, engages the viewer throughout. The lines may be drawn between those who feel wronged, but at no time is it ever easy for the viewer to take sides.

This perhaps explains the film's pacing and choice of photography. The basic storyline as described could very easily apply to a fast-paced Hollywood blockbuster, trading humanity and intelligence for cliché and car chases. Yet in the truer world of grocery shopping and household chores, moments of high drama are spaced apart by long periods of calm inactivity, leaving people to brood into the small hours over the choices they have made - the perfect environment within which feelings of revenge and misery can blossom. 'Revanche' is paced in such a way, with the principal characters having to tend to family and the ordinary demands of life while barely holding themselves together over the losses they have suffered. Yet these are their only opportunities to heal and come to terms with their pain. Spielmann accentuates these sequences with often picturesque long shots within which silence reigns and the magnitude of the suffering seems to pale into comparison with the enormity of the surrounding world.

Johannes Krisch, who some IMDb readers have intriguingly compared to Robert Carlysle, is well-cast as the hardened Alex. He not only looks the part, but conveys just the right mix of softness within a wary, battle-worn shell. Andreas Lust, as Robert, expertly portrays the policeman whose life collapses beneath him, propelling him into a world of anguish and self-doubt. Credit also goes to Johannes Thanheiser as Alex's grandfather, a man for whom life is much the same each day, yet this is no reason to complain, and Ursula Strauss as Susanne, who, as Robert's wife, must balance her role as supporter in difficult times with her needs as a woman.

Ultimately, the film leaves the viewer to tie up the loose ends, inviting comment on the drama that has unfolded. This is definitely a strong effort from all concerned, and a very mature approach to what easily could have been a simplistic action snuff piece. It's art imitating life with frankness and honesty, and worthwhile viewing. Actual rating: 7 1/2 stars.

As seen at the AFI Film Festival, Revanche is a tight thriller that is at a the same time a mood piece and a human moral drama. Austrian's official submission for the foreign language category in the 2009 Academy Awards is likely to this reviewer to get the nomination. Following the lives of two couples, a prostitute and a thug, a cop and his wife; tragic circumstances converge their lives when a bank robbery goes awry. Featuring a stand out performance by Tommy Lee Jones look-alike Johannes Krisch as the thug Alex, the man creates tension when out of frame, in the nick of shadows and in front of the camera. His character of Alex is a tortured soul that the audience is never sure off; his intentions or actions are hidden behind a mask of serenity. Not satisfied with being a replica of Jones, he also gives a very Tommy Lee Jones no-frills turn that keeps the movie afloat. Director Gotz Spielman creates tension using sound and extremely detailed camera set-ups. Not show-offy in anyway but including two long one take shots, he also uses his DP to infuse the screen with pale and desaturated color tones for nights scenes and natural lighting for daylight scenes, all used to provide a flat élan on the screen. It effectively supports the vibe of these revenge melodrama. What could be hammy in another director's hands becomes poetry in his. The sound of the ax smashing a block of wood never seemed more intimate. When a director uses it in such a way that the viewer feels inside the innards of a man's soul, you know the director knows his stuff. Intricate and detailed, it is consummate from top to bottom. If there is any qualms with the movie, it is in the character of Robert the cop played by Andreas Lust. His character arc is supposed to mirror Alex but he never earns the audience's sympathy the way Alex does; yet his story is geared toward such a response. The character is slightly underwritten and the actor never engages the character the way Johannes does. Playing against our expectations to create an ending reminiscent of Greek tragedy, it is a worthy movie experience and the best movie I've seen in 2008 along with Mike Leigh's Happy go lucky.