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.
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.