A convoluted and somewhat over-elaborate Austrian film tackling revenge is saved by astute directing and good performances, writes Peter Bradshaw
Austrian director Götz Friedrich's Revanche is a meditation on revenge which is intelligent and well-made, while at the same time rather contrived and implausible; it has a distinctive sort of Euro-hardcore sheen, mainly due to the superbly lucid, diamond-hard cinematography from Martin Gschlacht. Alex (Johannes Krisch) is an ex-con who works as a barman in a Vienna brothel where he has fallen in love with one of the girls there, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). He periodically visits his cantankerous grandfather (Hannes Thanheiser) in his country farm: the old man gets taken to church by Susanne (Ursula Strauss), wife of local cop Robert (Andreas Lust). The connection draws them all together in a web of coincidence and fate. There is something frankly rickety and elaborate about Friedrich's narrative structure, but the...
Austrian director Götz Friedrich's Revanche is a meditation on revenge which is intelligent and well-made, while at the same time rather contrived and implausible; it has a distinctive sort of Euro-hardcore sheen, mainly due to the superbly lucid, diamond-hard cinematography from Martin Gschlacht. Alex (Johannes Krisch) is an ex-con who works as a barman in a Vienna brothel where he has fallen in love with one of the girls there, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). He periodically visits his cantankerous grandfather (Hannes Thanheiser) in his country farm: the old man gets taken to church by Susanne (Ursula Strauss), wife of local cop Robert (Andreas Lust). The connection draws them all together in a web of coincidence and fate. There is something frankly rickety and elaborate about Friedrich's narrative structure, but the...
- 4/29/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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