86.250

A truly special film, the kind that hints at the transcendent and spiritual using nothing but the natural and mundane to prove it. Of special note is the use of nudity to do nothing sexual, but point towards greater intimacy from character to character and from audience to character than would normally exist.

A huge mess of contrivances, but if you can put that aside, it's powerful. It tells a story we've heard a thousand times in a way it's never been told before, and that's always something worth doing. Though the tension boils the whole time, there's only one point where it's allowed to burst, and when it did, it knocked me flat on my ass. Otherwise it's a slow burn, very well-acted, beautifully shot, and genuinely, effortlessly spiritual. Sticks with you, and not in the way you might expect.

Decent film by all means -- worth seeing -- but it has some serious issues. Somebody wrote that it reminded them of Haneke, Inarritu and Kieslowski, and I can't think of a more fitting insult. It's slight like a Haneke, contrived like an Inarritu, and hollow like a lesser Kieslowski.

Built around an unpretentious tale of fatal entwinement, Spielmann's Revanche captures with prodigious clarity the subsequent struggles to function in light of chronically tragic circumstances. Transposing these moments of introspection and deviation to a calm country setting, Spiellman amplifies the power of his pitched visual essay through employment of subtle telling gestures and revelatory bouts of evocative imagery, turning in a masterwork of seasoned, astonishing accomplishment. See it.

Superb thriller, beautifully filmed and paced. It moves slowly, and there is very little action, but it is riveting throughout. The characters are complex and rounded, and the story makes an open-ended but somehow satisfying, whole.

Through intelligent formalism, [director] Spielmann crafts a penetrating perception of the world and human experience.

"Revanche is almost fatally reluctant to get its hands dirty, its milieu shifting on a violent twist from a grimy Vienna brothel to the rural exurbs for buckets of guilt, angst, and frequently clumsy metaphors." - Bill Weber

If it is clear enough that the theme of this rather grim tale is "responsibility," it is less clear what the filmmaker hoped to impart by telling it. In its determination to confound generic expectations of action or thrills, it perhaps winds up inadvertently pulling its punches, seeming to gently chide its audience for presuming (or secretly wishing) that the protagonists are destined for some kind of violent confrontation by way of resolution. Relies a little too heavily on coincidence.

At first this may seem like it's going to be yet another Berliner Schule-style exercise in glacial miserablism, but fortunately Spielmann knows better and actually lets things happen, in this case for the better, as it results in character interactions and emotional content beyond vague ennui, while still maintaining a restrained stylistic remove that prevents the film from lapsing into melodrama. Haneke meets Inarritu is actually a pretty dead-on comparison, come to think of it.

This movie is beautiful and the directing and cinematography is just to die for.

This is an excellent character exploration piece with some very different characters all being looked into deeply. Nothing is ever fake or contrived, it's all very honest and true throughout.

it's slightly limited by its dependence on narrative coincidences, there are moments where it feels very contrived and/or tidy (especially that confrontation by the lake, and actually quite a few scenes involving the cop's post-trauma wallowing). but i love this thing an awful lot regardless, its taut pacing, the intensity and complexity and authenticity of its emotion, its balance of spontaneity and inevitability, ambiguity and simplicity. krisch is good, strauss is even better.

Really enjoyed this. The pacing is brilliant and it tells a very touching and engaging story. Loved the actors, particularly in the part of Alex, and the character development was very impressive. I really do have respect for a film that dares to be one thing for the first half of the film, then present a twist at the middle and become something entirely different.

A very good film, one that brought to mind Haneke, Inarritu, and mostly Kieslowski. It's got that combo of interconnectedness and honest exploration of pure humanity that he often dealt with. I didn't find it as moving or artistic as most Kieslowski films, but it did tell an interesting story that for the most part rings true. That rotating saw is a brilliant device for building tension. The performances all seemed good too, although sometimes that's hard to judge with another language.

For some reason I thought this was a Herzog movie. Rating it now, I realize it's not. But it could be one.

Now that's a film! Story takes time to build-up, but it is never boring. There are no long shots of the sky, no long shots of characters staring at each other. Something is always happening. That makes this film distinctive from other recent films that explore guilt. It doesn't look kinetic on the outside, but holds very high moral and emotional intensity.

Poetic with a remarkable moral depth. Extremely well crafted and acted, the whole film is really a shinning example of what creative, talented filmmakers working today can contribute to the cinema. Very moving.

A somewhat atypical spin on the "job gone wrong" genre, mixed with the "cop/criminal duality" genre, Revanche lives in its pacing and acting, which is top notch. I would have preferred a more ambiguous ending, but what are you gonna do?

I did understand the charackters, but I never really felt with them. Even so, I liked this movie a lot. It's so clear and the actors were great.

A gripping and terrific drama that masterfully delves into the psychology of revenge and atonement.