In German, revanche means revenge, and while revenge is a major thread in Revanche, it is not all of what Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann has in mind for his neo-noir psychological thriller.
Writer/director Spielmann starts his film with two couples leading very different lives. One couple is working in a bordello in a seedy section of Vienna, and the other couple lives an ordered life in the Austrian countryside. It is the eventual intersection of these lives that forms the backbone of Spielmann’s film and from which he has created a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions.
The Viennese couple, Alex and Tamara, work for a sleazy bordello owner. Alex is the bouncer and assistant at the bordello, and Tamara is a Ukranian sex worker. Alex and Tamara have fallen in love and wish to escape their sordid lives. To accomplish their getaway, ex-con Alex plans a bank robbery which ultimately goes awry. Fair warning, Spielmann has woven a bit of sex into his film, for, after all, much of the plot is developed in a brothel.
The couple in the countryside, policeman Robert and his wife Suzanne have their own troubles with a marriage that suffers from, among other things, an unsuccessful struggle to have children. The small village where Robert and Suzanne live is also home to Alex’s elderly grandfather, and this coincident nexus becomes the center for the second half of the film.
Alex crosses paths with Robert under calamitous circumstances, and from that point both men suffer guilt and grief and their lives are forever altered. It is after this tragic event that the film’s title Revanche becomes Alex’s quest.
This film is not a fast-action thriller. In fact, in no hurry to tell his story, the director slowly and purposely draws out a tense psychological portrait of vengeance and redemption. Spielmann deliberately employs few cuts and long shots, saying “What interests me the most is telling a thriller at an extremely slow pace. I don’t want viewers to just forget time for 90 minutes. I want them to be conscious of it.”
He says that the film’s “move to the country brings quiet, which becomes one of the main characters in the movie.” He also says, “Even the sound is scored. I have no need for music, which can be a cheap manipulation of emotions which the audience should achieve on their own.”
