REVIEW: Revenge

A few weeks ago, I was treated to witnessing what I believe to be one of the best movies of 2018 so far.  With that being said, it truly is a movie that isn't for everyone.  There are a number of components to the film that would turn a number of people off.  Checking out its Rotten Tomatoes page, it is R-rated for a great number of reasons.  It is a modern day exploitation film, and as such carries elements that a lot of viewers would consider unsavoury.

What lies beneath this story is something rather remarkable.  Director and writer Coralie Fargeat uses a vile template to make comments on the sexualization and use of women in film, at least that is how I take it.  As much progress as we would like to believe has been made about equality of the sexes in Hollywood, the truth is that not much has changed since we entered the 21st century.  The state of women in cinema is so bad that there is a simple three part test to evaluate how women are used in any given movie.  It is called the Bechdal test, and it asks if a movie has a) at least two women in it (them being named is preferable, but not key), b) they talk to each other, and c) they talk about something other than a man.  It's really simplistic, but it highlights just how often even these basic elements are missed.  In Revenge, Fargeat really seems to throw the Bechdal test against the wall and leave it to rot in the first twenty minutes of her film.  The portrayal of women is that they are curvy mistresses, built for the desires of men.  I interpret this to be a portrayal of how women are used in film.  The transformation that happens in Revenge is a statement on what women could and should be in movies.

The second shot of the tale is a beautiful shot of a desert set against a bright blue sky.  Zooming out, we see it is a reflection on the sunglasses of Richard (Kevin Janssens) as he travels along in a helicopter across the vast landscape.  I take the opening shot to indicate that perhaps the world is spread out before Richard, that he is in control of it all and that it is his possession.  The colours are vibrant, the shots are imaginative, and close ups never looked so tragic and gorgeous.  This is all thanks to the imagination of Fargeat, but also to the more than apt abilities of cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert. It is all done so that the environment is enhanced, and the colour of flesh pops off the screen.

Richard, it turns out, is heading to a remote property of his in the desert with his young bed-buddy mistress Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz).  She's a blonde, if the stereotype were to suddenly descend into a French rape/revenge exploitation movie.  Richard and Jen have a wonderful time overnight, only to have their romance broken the next day by the arrival of Richard's friends, Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede) and Stan (Vincent Colombe), who are visiting for an annual hunt with Richard.  The entire time they are there Jen's body is highlighted in the most sexual of ways, her curves being the beacon that guide the desires of impulsive men as she moves about in revealing clothing.  She is the upcoming victim, her sexuality is focused with more intent than a Hemi V8 at Barret-Jackson.

When Richard steps to take care of some things, Stan makes a move on Jen.  When she refuses his advances, he overpowers her and has his way with her.  Meanwhile, Dimitri is fully aware of what is happening and goes out of his way to do nothing about it.  When Richard returns, he is furious and tries to buy Jen's silence.  When that doesn't work, it is all about making sure nobody will ever hear Jen tell the story.  The men need to track her down and take care of her, and Jen seeks not to simply survive, but to get revenge.

While Jen was filmed scantily dressed, seemingly superficial, and all about her beauty, we then become witness to an engaging and powerful character transformation.  The fact that Fargeat filmed Jen to be a delicate woman whose only power is physical beauty in the beginning feels to be intentional.  Jen was presented less as a character and more of an image of how many movies before it used females in their scripts.  I was a child of the 80s, and I can say that so many movies had curvy women who needed to be rescued.  We are a little past that narrative, but not by much.  It was only a few years ago of Gareth Edwards giving us a female character in Godzilla who apparently couldn't manage the simple task of getting on an evacuation bus and had to wait for her man to come to her.  That's not hyperbole.  That happened, and it was a sad blemish in a really well crafted creature feature.

What is happening in Revenge isn't simply that Fargeat is supplying us with a kick ass female protagonist.  There are some truly remarkable film makers who have done that already.  The intention of Fargeat, or at least what I interpret, is that she wants to go far to one side of the spectrum just to turn it on its head.  Jen needed to be a naive girl who satisfied only as eye candy to the male audience.  Indeed, it is the male audience who are found in Stan, Dimitri and Richard.  They are the ones to fixate on the beauty and to reduce the individuals worth down to simply a sexual nature.

Lutz's portrayal of Jen allows for a great deal of complexity to evolve, and for a growth that isn't just entertaining, but rather empowering to watch.  It is hard for me to see her performance in Revenge and not think there are big opportunities set for her future.  Prior to this movie, I had only seen Lutz in Rings, and that's didn't turn into a film that seemed to really stretch those attached to it.  In Revenge, Lutz guides her character through many different phases and emotions.  I look forward to seeing her in another actioner, but really I have a feeling Lutz has the capability to play numerous types of roles.

There are many wonderfully vivid scenes in this film, such as Jen performing wilderness first aid on herself better than John Rambo could.  However, one stands out above them all, and, to me, is the point of the movie.  Jen has been on the run in the desert and had to fight for her life.  She has even less clothes as she did before as some have ripped away.  There is no shame or lecherous nature to this.  It is intentional, because now we are delivered a scene where the camera shows off all of the flesh and curves that had previously reduced her to a piece of meat.  Now the camera is respecting her body.  We no longer see her body as a playground for the impulsive male, but it is now a body built with the purpose of survival.  Somehow, with remarkable attention to detail, we have the exact same body before us, but now we get a sense of the true practicality of it.  Jen is no longer a gorgeous little girl brought along as arm candy.  She is powerful, she is determined, and she will mess up the men who abused her.  This is the ultimate power of Fargeat's meticulous competence, and it is a text book lesson to all film makers on how to extract depth from what was previously depicted as shallow.

Because this is an exploitation film, there is a healthy heaping of blood.  It's not realistic, but it isn't intended to be that.  It is intended to be a story against all odds, a woman battling against the destruction of her own body to destroy the damage made by awful men.  It is a wonderful bit of feminist art that is crafted in the form of something that I would not typically see as creating solid, complex female protagonists.  This is a masterclass piece of story telling that shows us all that any genre can be manipulated to carry a story with a point.  Yes there is blood, and yes there is gore, but that isn't actually the movie.  Jen is the movie.  Women in general are the movie.  Strength and one's own deliverance from the oppression of others is the movie.  It is not simply about survival, but of claiming victory over trauma.  On top of it all, Revenge is an absolutely thrilling story that delivers to the world a female protagonist that can rival the likes of Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley.  If you can deal with the visceral elements of the movie, then you need to do yourself a favour and spend some time with Revenge.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars


I need to say a little something here.  It is something that I have been saying for a long while on The Movie Breakdown, the podcast that I co-host with my friend Christopher Spicer, who has been saying it as well.  Women represent half of the population.  Period.  Fact.  Almost every action movie has a male lead.  Fact.  All of a sudden there is a woman in the lead roll in a movie and crazy, immature, suckling, basement bound, insignificant, deplorable, mysoginistic, human faeces, waste of space, waste of oxygen, waste of applying brakes, loser, man-children take to the internet and bash the film.  The reason?  Because it doesn't have a male lead.  It's not a problem with these people at all if a movie has twenty male actors to every female actor with a speaking role.  That's business as usual.  Throw in a significant woman and all of a sudden there is a problem.  This sexist behaviour is repulsive, and it is appalling.  Oh yeah, if you are the type of person who feels they have to battle the internet by leaving sexist remarks in comment sections, then you can leave my blog right now and never come back.  I don't write anything for you, and I never will.  I don't want you here.  Get out of your parent's basement and get some fresh air, preferably by playing in traffic.