Review: Revenge

Content Warning: This review contains discussion of sexual assault throughout that some readers may find upsetting.

When cinema deals with societal issues, there are often two ways to go about it. When it comes to the evermore-prevalent issue of sexual assault and harassment, one could either choose to explore it quietly and soberingly (in the way of Kitty Green’s The Assistant), or loudly and violently. Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge takes the latter option: the French writer-director’s feature debut (which has just been given a stunning Blu-ray re-release by Second Sight Films) is an utter powerhouse of feminist cinema – a bloody middle finger to the patriarchy, and a cinematic experience quite unlike any other.

The film’s concept is deceptively simple; Jen (Matilda Lutz) is on a getaway trip with her boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens) before his annual hunting trip with his buddies (Vincent Colombe and Guillaume Bouchede). Things quickly turn sour when the two friends arrive a day earlier than planned, leading to one of them assaulting Jen and the group leaving her for dead in the desert. Unluckily for them, Jen stays alive just long enough to escape, thus beginning a heart-stoppingly tense game of cat and mouse as she takes her revenge.

[Jen is] a stand-in for any woman who has ever suffered any kind of sexual harassment or assault, and a call to arms for those women and their allies that screams ‘we’re done being nice: it’s time to take action’

At the head of the movie is Matilda Lutz’s Jen – a perfectly sweet young woman who just wants a nice weekend away with her boyfriend, but after the assault is left severely injured and thirsty for payback. She is introduced as we may expect from a more traditional film of this sort: immediately sexualised by the film’s very nature. She wears a short skirt and sucks on a lollipop as the camera follows her hips and legs with the same intensity that the film’s male characters gaze at her – a conscious directorial choice from Fargeat that deliberately calls attention to itself as a way of signalling to the audience that this sort of needless sexualisation of female characters has no place in cinema anymore. Lutz is absolutely stunning in the role, but what’s perhaps most remarkable about Jen is that she barely says a word. She has no dialogue after the film’s opening 30 minutes, yet she stands tall as a fantastically feminist action hero the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. She’s strong, resourceful, relentless, and spends much of the film sprinting around the desert barefoot, wearing nothing but a ripped sports bra and a pair of shorts. But above all she is pissed; she’s had more than enough of these men taking advantage of her, and will stop at nothing to punish them. And yet, upon further thought, it seems possible that Jen’s silence is key: not only does it contrast beautifully with the volume of both the film itself and its male characters, but her silence allows her to serve as a surrogate – a stand-in for any woman who has ever suffered any kind of sexual harassment or assault, and a call to arms for those women and their allies that screams ‘we’re done being nice: it’s time to take action’ – and boy, does Fargeat revel in it.

The rape-revenge movie is certainly not a new type of genre film (it’s been around since the late 70s with grindhouse flicks like I Spit on Your Grave), but in making Revenge at once so brutal and feminist, Fargeat flips the subgenre’s entire history on its head and blasts it into next week. The film is so uncompromising in its moral stance that you’d be hard pressed not to be swept along for the ride – and what a ride it is. Much has been made of the film’s brutality since its release in 2017, and rightly so, as it is one of its most impressive aspects. Rarely have I winced, yelled, and held my breath as much as I did when watching Revenge, even on a second viewing. There is a real emphasis on the bodily, on hands, mouths, legs, eyes, that allows the film to position itself correctly in order to assault every sense it possibly can in the viewer. The action sequences, meanwhile, are not action so much as horrifically brutal and bloody violence, and they are all the better for it; we feel every gunshot, every knife wound – such is the film’s ferocity that every fresh drop of blood spilled feels as though it is one of our own. There is more fake blood present here than in any other movie I can think of; an anecdote from the cast recalls Fargeat constantly clamouring for more blood to splash over the actors and set for the film’s final sequence, an attitude that she carries over to the rest of the film. Fargeat is very clearly done with all the bullshit around the treatment of sexual assault victims and just wants to get something done. Everything is dialled up to eleven, bombastically over-the-top simply because it can be – there is no reason for Fargeat and her team to not take such initiative, so they do. Sometimes society needs a kick in the balls in the shape of something like Revenge, and that is exactly what she delivers here.

Sometimes society needs a kick in the balls in the shape of something like Revenge, and that is exactly what [Fargeat] delivers here

While not giving them a literal kick in the balls, the film undoubtedly takes pleasure in punishing its male characters for their roles in Jen’s assault – a refreshing change for a movie of this category. The men of Revenge are utterly repulsive, as they should be, and yet each of them feels real. There’s Stan, the repugnant assaulter played by an admittedly superb Vincent Colombe: he’s a typical ‘Nice Guy’ who feels entitled to sex with Jen simply because she danced with him the previous night, yet kicks up a fuss when she tries to say no. The rape scene itself is among the most horrifically memorable moments of the film; shot on a closed set with only the two actors and three members of crew present, it is extremely uncomfortable to sit through. While we thankfully see very little of the assault itself, the devil is in the details for Fargeat: it is preceded by a conversation between Stan and Jen that Lutz sees as a ‘psychological rape,’ the intensity of which spills over into the physical event, and much of the impact on the viewer comes from the film’s sound, as we first hear Jen’s screams before they are drowned out by the noise of a nearby television. Though not physically graphic, its brutally sensory nature serves to tie the film to the New French Extremity, a wave of French filmmaking that has been said to physically punish female characters before rebirthing them and allowing them to overwhelm the patriarchal figures that first punished them so.

There’s also Dimitri, the ‘Average Guy’ who is well aware of the assault, yet chooses to bury his head in the sand – or, in his case, the water. Guillaume Bouchede does perfectly well with only a small role, and Dimitri allows for the presence of the regular working man in the film’s conversation around sexual assault. He’s portrayed very clearly as a coward, but not a sympathetic one: both Bouchede and Fargeat are quick to ascertain that, in allowing the assault to happen, Dimitri is just as guilty as Stan. Finally there’s Richard, the rich, married boyfriend who we hope to God will stick up for Jen, but who turns out to be just as bad as the other two. Kevin Janssens walks the line between safe and dangerous beautifully well, as Richard is quite possibly the biggest bastard of the lot; he could very easily be read as representing the corporations and big businesses that pretend to be friends to victims while also wanting to sweep everything under the rug, before turning on them at a moment’s notice when things don’t look to be going their way. Like everything about Revenge, this presentation of gender politics is hardly subtle, but when the wonders it works are as good as they are here, there is simply no need for subtlety.

As a sensory cinematic experience, Revenge is near enough unparalleled in recent years

Alongside the excellent direction from Fargeat, the film is backed up behind the camera by gorgeous cinematography from Robrecht Heyvaert and a booming electronic score from Robin Coudert. Heyvaert and Fargeat wanted the movie to have a feeling of the surreal to it, replacing the grittiness and roughness of other revenge movies – it’s safe to say they succeeded. The gorgeous landscapes of the Moroccan deserts are captured beautifully by Heyvaert, and his use of lens filters lets the colours pop with an intensity resembling that of Mad Max: Fury Road (a film he has cited as an inspiration for the look of Revenge). His camerawork even feels Lynchian in places, with an unsettling horror to one sequence in particular that captures just how much victims of sexual assault are haunted by their perpetrators. Coudert’s score feels reminiscent of synth artists such as Carpenters both John and Brut, elevating the ethereal and surreal nature of the film with its sprawling soundscape. As a sensory cinematic experience, Revenge is near enough unparalleled in recent years.

As such, I’m extremely glad that the film is finally being given a physical release worthy of its stature. Revenge is the latest in a long line of independent movies to receive a Blu-ray re-release from UK distributor Second Sight (coming in behind such excellent films as Upgrade, The Invitation, and Anna and the Apocalypse). The limited-edition Blu-ray comes packed with nearly three hours of brand-new extras, including wonderfully insightful interviews with Fargeat, Lutz, Bouchede, Heyvaert, and Coudert, and an audio commentary with Kat Ellinger, editor of Diabolique. The set itself is presented in a gorgeous slipcase, and includes a poster with new artwork of the movie, and a book with new, exclusive essays on the film by Mary Beth McAndrews and Elena Lazic. For fans of both a good thriller and physical media, the set is a must.

After two viewings of the film and much time devoted to diving into it, I’m still staggered that a movie like Revenge exists. Coralie Fargeat, frankly, had no right to make something as bombastically good as this for her first feature – yet she did, and in the process proved herself a name to watch over the coming years. The cast and crew have nothing but praise for her, and I, for one, will be first in line for whatever she decides to do next.

Verdict:

Few recent movies have deserved a gorgeous physical release as much as Revenge. Blasting into our lives out of absolutely nowhere, Fargeat’s debut film stands as a horrifically bloody, blazingly feminist revenge thriller that takes no prisoners and makes no compromises. Some slight suspension of disbelief may be required in places, but that doesn’t stop Revenge from being one of the truly great genre movies of the 21^st century: the perfect thriller for the #MeToo era.