well I'm sorry to say that it's another art house foreign film this week. this is in the most part due to the fact that looking through the cinema listings in main stream cinemas (not naming any names...ODEON!!) I felt incredibly disheartened. Is Furry Vengeance really the best Hollywood can offer me at the moment? so I decided to return to the comforting bosom of the Curzon (Renoir this time...get me!) and my choice was the Oscar nominated Revanche by Austrian director Gotz Spielman.
Just think of it as a modern day (Austrian) Romeo and Juliet...if Romeo was an ex con working part time in a brothel and Juliet a Ukrainian prostitute trying to evade the advances of her charming pimp...on second thoughts forget the Shakespeare thing.
So we have our tragic hero Alex, and his girlfriend, Tamara. Some fairly graphic scenes take place in the first part of the film and gives as an insight into the underworld of Vienna. The cinematography here is vital also to creating this gritty atmosphere, the audience being confronted with a sea of greys, the only splash of colour coming from the red lights of the brothel...nice, Gotz, nice. As you may expect trouble crops up along the way...Tamara wants to escape, and who can really blame her, poor misguided prostitute/stripper!
and of course Alex will come to the rescue with his beyond brilliant plan...rob a bank! why didn't I think of that? and as is the nature with these kind of things things don't go quite to his fantastic scheme. A friendly police man stumbles upon the scene and whoops Tamara is dead.
so now what is poor Alex to do? of course, go stay will his aged grandfather on a farm in the countryside.
The film takes a strange turn here, as it enters is second half. the lighting lifts, colours are back it's all very rural and lovely. quite a change. and our friend Alex appears to have gotten away with it...and then uh oh his grandads only real friend out here is a charming young woman and her husband...who is a police man....yes that police man!!!
well, well the story is coming together. he must get his Revenche! not so fast. no one can just shoot a police man...can they?? or perhaps his wife? who takes a special interest in Alex, it's all that wood chopping he does you see. and they are having trouble conceiving.
Well in the interest of not giving too much away I'll leave the synopsis there...safe to say the ending is very unsatisfactory.
Well it cannot be argued that this is an intelligently crafted beautiful film with strong acting performances all round. Credit to Alex, his grandfather and the police man's wife. And a strong storyline of Greek Tragedy proportions. However I feel it gets sucked into the trap so many modern European films do of just being too slow. Each shot lingers that little bit too long and with absolutely NO MUSIC it also felt slightly arduous. Another point to consider is how contrasting the two halves of the film are. when Alex flees to the countryside the city is never seen or mentioned again. All the characters are forgotten about including the pimp who is looking for her? very odd.
so in conclusion a very intelligent but flawed film which I did genuinely enjoy sitting through. And in my humble decision 6 1/2 out of 10 will suffice. keep reading as next week I think i will be taking a closer look at Bad Lieutenant. let's hope it's not a Bad Film.
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