This
country wouldn’t be so violent, if we could just keep out the French. That
seems to be the clear take-away from this new vengeance horror-thriller. The
director happens to be French too, but she is also a woman—an inescapable fact
that gives her a different perspective on the brutality of the New French
Extremity movement and the grindhouse tradition of the rape-revenge thriller.
Jen, the party girl, is in for a hard time, but she will give back even more
than she gets in Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge,
which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Jen
does not mind that her French lover Richard is married—and neither does he. The
important thing is he has money and the right kind of looks to be with her. It
is maybe implied that he and his frog hunting buddies work for some sort of
merc contractor, but details are kept deliberately vague. Regardless, Richard,
Stanley, and Dimitri certainly seem to be comfortable with guns. The latter two
were supposed to arrive after Jen had already left the isolated desert vacation
home, but Jen is a good sport when they show up early. Unfortunately, Stanley
takes her flirtiness as sufficient grounds to rape her during Richard’s
absence. When he returns, he is quite disappointed by the state of affairs, but
when Jen rebuffs his hush money he decides to kill her instead.
Usually,
getting pushed off a cliff and impaled on a jagged tree trunk is enough to kill
most people, but not Jen. Despite her hard-partying ways, she instinctively
adapts to the hunter-prey cat-and-mouse game. She also discovers the healing
power of peyote. Frankly, her epic cauterizing scene has some logical potholes
(kids, do not try this at home), but you have to give the film an “A” for
effort. However, Revenge really locks
in during Jen’s big showdown with Richard, back at the ranch. Let’s just say Fargeat
fully capitalizes on the sticky, slippery nature of blood (when it flows and
pools).
It
is a simple title, but that is what Revenge
is all about. Matilda Lutz handles Jen’s transformation from sex kitten to
spiritual vengeance warrior as convincingly as anyone could. Kevin Janssens does
a similarly credible job with Richard’s evolution from loverboy to stone cold man-hunter.
Vincent Colombe basically makes us hate Stanley more and more, taking him from
callous attacker to sniveling cowards, but he is certainly effective.
So,
where can we build a wall to keep the French out? As this grindhouse subgenre
goes, Revenge is about as brutal as
it gets, while still preserving the cathartic satisfaction of the payback. Granted,
it is a small body of work to judge from, but Revenge still represents a radical departure from Fargeat’s previous
work, the relationship-driven science fiction short film, Reality+. Nevertheless, she clearly knows what she is doing. Along
with cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert, she clearly evokes the look and spirit
of “classic” exploitation cinema. Even more intense than Cravioto’s Bound to Vengeance (a.k.a. Reversal), Revenge is recommended for hearty viewers who can handle its
graphic extremes, when it screens again tonight (1/26) in Park City, as part of
the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.