Revanche opens with the reflection of a forest in a pond, the trees pointing to the bottom of the frame, and it’s here that the story starts and ends. It begins in the dark, something drops into the water and the concentric circles agonizingly meander outward until they are gone and the water is still again. What’s astonishing to me about this film is how it starts upside down, intentionally cliched in nearly ever way, so much that the first thirty minutes (with exception of the golf scene, which seems awkwardly placed) foretell not an ounce of where the story ultimately heads.
And yet nothing is presented as a ‘twist’ or significant shift in tone (though there is a definite shift upward, literally: the trees pointing upward); rather, everything builds upon what comes before and is logical. It’s so refreshing to see a film be logical, realistic and still surprise. At the start, we meet Alex, Konecny and Ursula – Alex is a handler or flunky or something for Konecny, who owns Ursula’s contract, who just happens to be an imported Ukrainian prostitute. Alex falls for Ursula, and they enact a secret affair. This part of the film plays like a standard thriller, but as soon as they head for the countryside, filmmaker Götz Spielmann begins to play with big themes like isolation, redemption, revenge and guilt in what can only be described as a pastoral framework.
Now, where did I put my keys?
And to speak of the last third of the film is to ruin some of its most majestic moments, but there are a couple moments that deserve a little scrutiny. When a cop and his wife are arguing in their home, and the quarters are cramped and hostile (the same place the wife has just had a conversation previously about her husband’s inability to conceive with her mother following an unsuccessful and (apparently) miraculous pregnancy), they take their argument outside and suddenly they are minor players in a much bigger scene, where Alex watches them from afar. It’s a minor argument, repeated, but it sends the wife on a path the leads directly to Alex and what’s left of Ursula. At this point, in many ways, she becomes the film’s protagonist, manipulating the ex-con Alex into giving her the only thing that might give her husband a bit of solace.
It’s a surprising conclusion, if only because it lacks a degree of cynicism (and yet, how they use each another) one has come to expect from ‘thrillers’ and is actually redemptive (unlike Haneke’s The White Ribbon) in a wholly satisfying and human way. The film ultimately returns to the ripples of the pond from the start of the film, and while we do not know what it was that made such a splash in the start, we have a pretty good idea now (there are a couple options). And the distance from which we view this action, the trees pointing upward now, lacks the excruciating slowness of the beginning. After the splash, the wind blows quickly and the pond returns to normal.
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Wow! Wait! What?