Like its antihero, Revanche spends most of its length stalling for time, all the while allowing the film’s ideas to burrow into our minds, driving us crazy with anticipation.
Thanks in part to a certain Kevin Costner vehicle, the title of the justly Oscar-nominated Austrian film Revanche remains untranslated. Good—the name means “revenge,” which may lead audiences to mistake it for a blunt, self-important statement on the subject. (And a mere week after the Cro-Magnon pro-revenge Boondock Saints sequel, no less.) But with the title obscured behind another language, viewers are free to let their minds roam, thus embracing the complexities of Götz Spielmann’s intensely introspective drama.
Indeed, while the film takes an unmistakably anti stance on vengeance, the real subject is an unusually chronic strand of ambivalence. Slowly unspooling its story in eerily calm scenes, Revanche begins with Alex, an ex-con (Johannes Krisch) as he successfully convinces his regular Ukrainian prostitute, Tamara (Irina Potapenko), to flee her job and come shack up with him. All that’s needed is a modest, poorly planned-out bank job, the fall-out of which results in Robert (Andreas Lust), an everyman cop, putting one in Potapenko’s head.
Alex, having been masked during the ordeal, follows a guilt-ridden Robert to his country manse, at which point you’d swear he’s sworn revenge—and yet what’s taking so long? Rather than pop a cap and move on, Alex infiltrates Robert’s life—and eventually his wife (Ursula Strauss)—and proceeds to spend most of his time eavesdropping on Robert or intensely and constantly chopping wood. Is he biding his time? Is he moved by Robert’s plunge into severe depression?
Having set up a nail-biter plot, Spielmann lets an indecisiveness that would irk Hamlet—not to mention the terminally ambivalent stars of most Mumblecore opuses—eat up the second half, a transcendently glacial crawl that tests patience even as it grants a genuinely sticky situation its complex due. Meant entirely as a compliment, it’s not hard to see Alex, forever on the brink of a potentially brutal decision, as our writer-director seems as unsure of what Alex will do.
Like its antihero, Revanche spends most of its length stalling for time, all the while allowing the film’s ideas to burrow into our minds, driving us crazy with anticipation. No spoiler to say both Spielmann and Alex find a conclusion that’s satisfying and authentic, making Revanche complete without being tidy. B+
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