Revenge (2018) Review!!!

Synopsis – Never take your mistress on an annual guys’ getaway, especially one devoted to hunting – a violent lesson for three wealthy married men.

My Take – While rape/revenge flicks have been common since its gruesome inception with films like I Spit on your Grave, Naked Vengeance and Savage Streets, it’s with the success of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino‘s Kill Bill (Volume 1 and 2), there’s been an increasing obsession of drenching beautiful women in blood and battering in order to make them seem strong and powerful on the big screen. But for a general audience (like myself), such films can be difficult to watch for obvious reasons of their inherently uncomfortable subject matter, which is only made worse by films that revel in the grime and filth surrounding the act of violence and its perpetrators. Here, the film in question from French director Coralie Fargeat seemed to cause quite a stir with audience whether it be because of its bloody violence, or causing a discourse between feminists and male film goers.

Personally, I dislike revenge films as they are for me simply too gory and on a certain level, repulsive, however, the extreme positive critical reception (an astonishing 91% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a couple of recommendation vowed me into watching this one. Turns out, director Fargeat seems to have taken that as a challenge of sorts for her feature debut and has delivered what is quite possibly the most gorgeously-shot rape/revenge film you’ve ever seen, and the film is quite entertaining as long as you can ignore the feminist political overtones and the obviously unrealistic parts, and just watch it for entertainment.

Despite sharing a general atmosphere with ‘I Spit on Your Grave‘, director Fargeat manages to bring in a style that moves the film at a perfect pace and leveling up the brutality, gore and even giving us a feministic heroine to root for modern day film goers. But you have to admit there is something endlessly satisfying about seeing a woman who has been disgustingly wronged get her swift and brutal vengeance. It doesn’t undo what has happened to her, but it goes a wee way towards bettering things.

The story follows Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), a sexy aspiring-actress mistress, who along with her wealthy married French boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens) travels to a remote hunting lodge situated in high desert scrub land. Unfortunately for them their privacy is interrupted with the early arrival of Richard’s hunting buddies’ Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède). While the four spend the night drinking and partying, Stan being an insecure man jealously watches as Jen flirt with Richard while Dimitri, a lumbering grotesque doesn’t indulge in the fantasy beyond staring at her butt as she walks away.

However, the next morning as Richard leaves to collect hunting permits, Stan rapes Jen, while Dimitri does nothing. When Richard returns, finds out about the rape, he prefers to cover things up by offering Jen money and a new job in Canada, but when Jen threatens to contact his wife, he pushes her off a high cliff, hoping that the fall would kill her. But Jen survives and begins to hunt the three experienced hunters who find tracking down Jen no easy task as she turns the tables on them by molding herself into the desert, the river, scrub land and mountains.

As sadly generic as the title may be, director Fargeat’s film is anything but, instead the film hits the various expected beats of the sub-genre, from the triggering act itself through the catharsis of retribution, but it does it all with something of a female gaze, an eye for beauty, and lots and lots of blood. Sure, the plot is nothing new, and throws you into the mix of things without explaining too much what’s going on in regards to the characters. But it’s the presentation along with the unique style and tone what sets it apart from similar films. It’s so visually stunning that you can’t help but to admire the beautiful art done here. There are moments of surreal imagery, graphic wounds and bloody kills uncovered on screen and shades of The Revenant as the heroine finds herself, recovers and arms up to fight as much as DiCaprio did in that film.

The fact that this is director Fargeat’s first film is truly staggering. The confidence and self-assuredness on display in every frame of the film speaks to her explosive competence; as this is a blockbuster debut. It´s surprising how many times the film destroys your expectations in purpose, for example, what you expect after watching the first act is completely different from what you get on the second and third act of it. One of the issues raised with the sub-genre is the violence during the assault itself, for example in film maker Meir Zarchi’s film, I Spit on Your Grave, the rape scene was long and violent, but here director Fargeat makes a bold choice by making the camera leave the room while Jen is being raped and follow the complicit Dimitri instead, who turns up the volume on the TV to drown out Jen’s screams. While this ultimately softens the impact of the sexual violence, it puts an exclamation point on Dimitri’s complicity and subverts our expectations to unsettling effect.

This is also a film very much about survival. On both sides of this fight are people doing everything they possibly can to save their lives. While Jen’s life is quite literally on the line, the attackers are metaphorically dead if she does make it out alive. After all, they do attempt to rape her and murder her while on vacation. Of course, it’s easy to pick a side in this fight from the get-go, but the fact that this is a down and dirty fight for survival makes it all the more enthralling to watch it unfold. Especially since Jen has an almost supernatural drive to finish what they started. In that regards, the film is about as hardcore and brutal as they come.

Director Fargeat’s visuals are also stunning here. Her shot compositions and framing choices are inspired, and her thematic visual motifs are cool and far from overbearing. She returns occasionally to the image of a decaying apple, always at opportune moments, infrequently enough to avoid being annoying. The clever transformation of the female lead from urbanized party goer to feral mud smeared gun toting wild woman, is handled with a certain care that shows in the final product. By presenting Jen as a supposed “slut who was asking for it” rather than a virginal girl-next-door in unfortunate circumstances, the film fashions itself into a perfectly pitched critique on contemporary rape culture. It’s a bold move prone to misconstrued takes given how the film’s attitude promotes exaggerated imagination.

Yet in a post-#MeToo climate, the film atypical skew challenges the reexamination of outdated perceptions through the deceptive simplicity of its horrifying scenario. As a result, the film’s bloody ending is frustrating on the one hand, because it’s so satisfying imagining a film like this one concluding with Jen simply going to the authorities and sending Richard to jail forever. But this was never a film that was going to end with anything other than vicious violence and copious amounts of fake blood, and the way director Fargeat stages the film’s climax is awe-inspiring. If there is a criticism that director Coralie Fargeat’s film has difficulty escaping, it’s that the film overindulges in “too much” to nearly comical extremes. Too on-the-nose with these characterizations. Too over-the-top with blood-soaked visceral violence and with a run time of 108 minute may seem too long for four people to run through a familiar rape-revenge routine.

While seasoned film watchers will pick up on context clues, however I would have liked to see a bit more character development with Jen and Richard. The plot takes a backseat to the high-stakes tension, and artfully composed shots. For those who can suspend their disbelief in regards to how people heal from serious injury, you will have a lot of fun with this film. A huge credit for that goes to the film’s lead Matilda Lutz (Rings), who turns in a jaw-dropping performance. She sells the idea that she has an indomitable spirit with every fiber of her being, which is a complete 180 from how she starts the film out. The sequences where she performance field surgery on herself in order to survive will make audiences absolutely cringe even though it doesn’t show anything too disturbing. Instead, director Fargeat relies on Lutz‘s reactions, screams, and wails of pain to really sell the sequences. This only makes it all the more convincing as she pursues her attackers across a desolate desert landscape. The antagonists, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchède, and Kevin Janssens also play their menacing parts well. On the whole, ‘Revenge’ is a good old-fashioned revenge story that is both beautiful and gory.