You’d be forgiven if you spent
the first half-hour of Gotz
Spielmann’s insinuating drama
Revanche wondering what the emotional
payoff could possibly be. It seems
like it’s just gonna be one of those
pokey, angst-y Euro-character studies
that critics get all lathered up about yet
leave audiences chilly.
Be patient with Revanche, though, and
you may be very glad you did. The set-up
finds a Ukrainian prostitute in Vienna
named Tamara (Irina Potapenko) weighing
an offer from her boss (Hanno Poschl)
to service his wealthier—and sometimes
more demanding—clients, much to the
dismay of Tamara’s boyfriend, Alex
(Johannes Krisch). A recently released ex-con,
Alex thinks he can pay off Tamara’s
debt and take care of her himself by
robbing a rural bank. “Nothing can go
wrong,” he reassures her.
Naturally, something does go wrong—and it’s the exact nature of what goes
wrong that sets in motion the film’s
gripping second half. Alex finds himself
hiding out at the farm of his widowed
grandfather and entangled in the lives
of a policeman (Andreas Lust) and his
wife (Ursula Strauss), whose marriage
is already strained by their inability to
conceive a child. It’s drama of the most
basic, yet riveting kind: Who are these
people to one another, and will the tensions
between them eventually explode?
While the one early plot twist is a
bit of a stunner, Spielmann hasn’t made
a movie that depends on knockout
moments. Instead, Revanche works as a
gradual accumulation of performance
moments and character insights. Krisch,
in particular, is phenomenal as Alex, who
becomes a fascinating personification of
the kind of guy who turns the blame for
his poor decision-making on the world.
Yet, he’s also a complex intersection
between the hard case he sees himself as
and the tangle of emotions that inspires
Tamara’s boss to describe him as “too
soft.” Watching Alex cut firewood could
feel slow and repetitive—or it could be
the act of watching a man decide which
side of his own soul will win out.
REVANCHE
Johannes Krisch, Ursula Strauss, Andreas Lust
Not Rated
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