Revenge (2008)

Directed by: Götz Spielmann | 121 minutes | drama, romance, crime | Actors: Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust, Ursula Strauss, Johannes Thanheiser, Hanno Pöschl, Magdalena Kropiunig, Toni Slama, Elisabetha Pejcinoska, Aniko Bärkanyi, Annamaria Haytö, Nicoletta Prokes, Rainer Gradischnig, Haris Bilajbegovic, Aleksander Regasjicleksander

Anyone who visits an Austrian film will not expect much cheerfulness. In the land of professional black eyes Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, many a film director also shows a dark side. The films by Michael Haneke (‘Caché’) and Ulrich Seidl (‘Import/Export’) stand out for their depressing portrayal of humanity, while documentaries by Erwin Wagenhofer (‘We Feed the World’), Nikolaus Geyrhalter (‘Our Daily Bread’) and Hubert Sauper (“Darwin’s Nightmare”) may be a little more somber.

With all that melancholy in mind, the Austrian crime drama ‘Revanche’ is actually not that bad. The story about an amateur bank robber and his Ukrainian prostitute girlfriend does not make you happy, but the human dignity usually remains here.

The screenplay for ‘Revanche’ could have come from Georges ‘Maigret’ Simenon, who wrote psychological novels and novels in addition to his famous detective novels. Like ‘Revanche’, this work is characterized by a great psychological depth and by a preference for small people who want to perform far too great deeds.

For the film adaptation of this story, director/screenwriter Götz Spielmann made a number of striking choices, which work well in combination. The lifelike, strongly acted characters and the absence of background music add to the realism. The story and the photography don’t do that. Not everyone robs a bank from time to time and not every bank robber has to deal with a dramatic aftermath. The photography stands out for its tight frames and eye-pleasing compositions, where you would expect nervous handheld images.

This combination of realism and stylization allows the viewer to fully empathize with the characters while at the same time realizing that it is only film. The minimum of dramatization works well. A story that is already so dramatic in itself needs no further exaggeration. Moreover, the direct confrontations are now hitting hard.

All this does not make ‘Revanche’ a masterpiece. The middle part drags on a bit, where you can wonder how much wood a person can chop in his life. Also, you wonder if the Austrian police are really so ignorant that they didn’t solve this crime in a few days. However, those minuses are no excuse to skip this film. No wonder it was nominated for an Oscar.