Revanche (in English: Revenge) is the new movie by Götz Spielmann. It’s nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar. [Yay! Go Austria!]

Plot:
Alex (Johannes Krisch) works as a bouncer/guy for everything in a brothel in Vienna. He’s in love with one of the prostitutes, Ukranian immigrant Tamara (Irina Potapenko) and she with him. When things go bad with the owner of the brothel (Hanno Pöschl), because Tamara declines a “promotion”, they decide to run away. To get the  money necessary for that, Alex decides to rob a bank, which ultimately connects his life to the lives of police man Robert (Andreas Lust), his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) and Alex’ grandfather (Johannes Thanheiser).

The movie is rather slow and very intense. It has a wonderful cinematography. And the cast is mostly very good. It could have been a bit shorter, though.

[SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS]

Before I go on, I have to tell you the rest of the plot:
Alex robs the bank close to his grandfather’s home. When he gets back outside, a police man – Robert – is talking to Tamara, who insisted on coming along. Not knowing what to do, Alex threatens Robert and drives off with Tamara. Robert tries to shoot their wheels, but instead hits and kills Tamara. Alex is devastated. He leaves her in the woods and walks to his grand father’s place, an old almost ruined farm. He starts to help out there, cutting wood and gradually taking full responsibility for the grandfather.
From time to time their neighbour Susanne drops by. She’s Robert’s wife. She and Robert are trying to conceive a child and failing. Especially now, after the robbery: Robert is blaming himself for Tamara’s death, but he can’t talk about it with Susanne. Their relationship is suffering for it.  
Alex soon makes the connection between Susanne and Robert and starts to spy on them. The conversation snippets he overhears convince him that Robert does not regret shooting Tamara at all. Therefore, he’s bent on revenge.
One day Susanne proposes Alex to have an affair with her. Hesitatingly he accepts, but still continues to stalk Robert. Until he talks to Robert one day and sees his suffering.
By accident, Susanne sees a photo of Tamara when she goes to break up with Alex because she’s pregnant and makes the connection. The movie ends ambiguously. We don’t know what Susanne is going to do with that information.

Phew.

Alex and Susanne

You can divide the movie in three distinct parts – acts, if you will.
In the first part, we get the setup of the situation and the characters are introduced. This part ends with Tamara getting shot.
In the second part, Alex is mourning his loss, immersing himself into the work on the farm and nursing his thoughts of revenge.
The third part starts with Susanne and Alex having the affair and the resulting tensions.

I didn’t stop the time but I think that in minutes, it’s about 60:30:30. Therefore, the set up sometimes seemed to take too long, especially compared to the rest of the movie. It wasn’t actually boring, but it could have done with some tightening.

Apart from that I really liked the structure and the whole screenplay, also by Götz Spielmann. He really has a talent for capturing the way people actually talk. [Something he already demonstrated in Antares.] But even more impressing is his sensibility for relationships. The wayAlex and his grandfather start to bond, slowly, or Alex’ relationships with either Tamara or Susanne are very delicately observed.

A customer and Tamara

The acting was also very, very good. Sometimes I’m surprised that there are actual good actors in Austria. I mean, more than three. Johannes Krisch is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Alex is a complicated character, one the audience wants to relate to, but can’t really because you never know what he’s going to do. And Johannes Krisch as Alex makes even cutting wood an intense experience.

But also Ursula Strauss, Irina Potapenko and Johannes Thanheiser are very strong. The only one who wasn’t that good was Hanno Pöschl (ironically probably the most famous of the actors).

The movie is very explicity, nudity-wise. Well, very explicit compared to US-American movies. Pretty normal for Austrian standards. Still. You wouldn’t take a child to see it.

Grandfather, Alex and Susanne

So, summarising, I’d say that it is a very good and very accomplished movie and reinforces my belief in Austrian movies. It’s definitely a recommendation.

But for the Oscar… I think it’s save to say that it will not get it. In a different year, I’d say definitely. But this year, out of the four nominated movies I’ve seen, it ranks third only.