Directed by Götz Spielmann. Starring Johannes Krisch, Ursula Strauss, Irina Potapenko Club, IFI, Dublin, 121 min
PERHAPS THOSE Austrian film-makers whose work fails to play abroad tend towards light romcoms and kids’ films about talking rabbits. Anything is possible. The films from that country we do see, however, are invariably as bleak and pessimistic as an evening spent listening to Max von Sydow read Philip Larkin.
This elegantly structured, impressively acted thriller is not quite as grim as recent films by Ulrich Seidl or the early work of Michael Haneke – indeed, scrunch your eyes up and you could view the ending as hopeful. Still, it remains a fairly gruelling experience.
Revanchebegins by introducing us to a couple who, though existing at the outskirts of legality, have somehow managed to forge a well-balanced, loving relationship. Alex (Johannes Krisch) works as a heavy in the brothel where Tamara (Irina Potapenko), an immigrant from the east, services seedy businessmen.
When her boss suggests a change in her professional circumstances – promising on the surface, but with sinister undercurrents – Alex elects to solve all their problems by robbing a bank. This being an Austrian film, the raid goes disastrously wrong and Alex retires to the country where, in between scowling at his disapproving granddad, he starts a weird affair with a married neighbour (Ursula Strauss).
Allowing the sounds of the country to point up the urban outlaw's loneliness, Revanchegradually resolves itself into an essay on guilt and remorse. It is not just the excellent Krisch's resemblance to a young Bruno Ganz that suggests key films from the German renaissance of the early 1970s. Revancheis infused with the same brooding menace that characterised the best work of Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff.
Unfortunately, it also demonstrates the same slightly dubious attitude to female sexuality that hung around in that era. Is it really necessary for Tamara to spend so much time sitting around with her breasts on display? An impressive piece of work, nonetheless.
