Revanche

GRIEF ENCOUNTER Krisch and Strauss seek different kinds of solace.

This Austrian import takes its time giving us our bearings, and the first half trades on a certain cognitive dissonance. In one thread, a career criminal (Krisch) in the city hatches a plan to escape his dead-end lifestyle, motivated in part by jealousy and anger over the treatment of his Russian prostitute girlfriend (Potapenko). In the other strand, a happy but childless couple (Lust and Strauss) carries on quietly in the countryside. We know these two stories will be linked, of course, but exactly how is part of the movie’s surprise. The ambiguity extends to the film’s moral compass. Initially, it’s tempting to regard Krisch’s volatile, mustached Alex as a thug, but Revanche slowly reveals him as its emotional core.

To say more would lessen the impact, even though the film isn’t, for the most part, plot-driven. (When it is, as with one Costnerian twist, it seems overly deliberate.) But the hypnotic power of Revanche comes in its uncomfortable silences, and in its ominous observation of the woods where Alex is forced to hide. The title means “revenge,” so clearly some action is coming, but it’s unusual to see a film so devoted to suspense, feeling and atmosphere at the expense of conventional dramatics.

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