Revanche

Plot synopsis:
Alex works in Vienna for Konecny, owner of the brothel "Cinderella", where Tamara, a Ukrainian prostitute, also works. Konecny has a possessive attitude towards Tamara, not realizing that she and Alex are in a secret relationship and want to leave Vienna as soon as possible to begin a new life together. While visiting his grandfather Hausner, who lives on a smallholding in the country, Alex decides to rob the local bank. Hausner has a neighbour, Susanne, who lives nearby, and visits him regularly. She is married to Robert, a policeman. They keenly want a child, but although Susanne was pregnant, she lost the baby and is unable to conceive a second time because of Robert's fertility problems. Susanne would like to adopt, but Robert refuses to accept that there is any difficulty in his fathering children. Consequently, their relationship is suffering.
Tamara has a bad feeling about Alex's planned bank robbery, and insists on waiting for him in the getaway car while Alex, armed and masked, holds up the bank. By chance, Robert is on patrol and walks past the car at the moment Alex is returning to it. Alex threatens him with his gun and drives off. Robert shoots at the tires as it speeds away but instead hits Tamara fatally. In despair, Alex abandons the car and Tamara's body in the wood and makes his way to Hausner's rustic barn, where he hides out. His loss makes him very withdrawn and distraught; he scarcely speaks, and spends hours every day aggressively chopping wood for the winter. Hausner begins playing the accordion a great deal with encouragement by Susanne, who visits often, adding to Alex's growing unease.
Robert and Susanne's relationship becomes further strained because Robert's unintentional killing of Tamara is causing him great mental anguish. He blames himself for it and can find no way to discuss or deal with the guilt. He carries Tamara's photo round with him, and looks at it constantly. His colleagues refuse to take his grief seriously, and try to encourage him by telling him that he has only killed a bank robber's accomplice, and that in the forthcoming official inquiry into the death he will have nothing to worry about.
While they are shopping Alex and Hausner meet Susanne, who tells them about the bank robbery and that it was her husband who shot at the car. This has an effect on Alex. On her visits to Hausner, Alex has scarcely reacted at all to the extremely talkative Susanne and, when he does, is very dismissive, although this has apparently not bothered her. Under cover of darkness, he now starts to spy on the couple in their house and follows Robert when he goes jogging in the woods. After one of her visits to Hausner, Alex speaks to Susanne bluntly and tries to discourage her from returning. This seems not to trouble her: she invites him to her house, with a hint that she will be alone that evening. Alex appears not to react to the invitation but that evening suddenly turns up at her terrace door and startles her, until she realises that it is "only Alex." She offers him a glass of wine. While Susanne talks brightly but nervously in an uninterrupted stream, Alex looks depressed and is almost silent. After a while he asks her why she wants to have sex with him. To his astonishment Susanne participates willingly in an almost brutal sex act, which seems to offer Alex a vent for his accumulated aggression. When he goes to take a shower he sees the nursery that Suzanne and Robert have set up in their house, but Susanne refuses to discuss it. As he is leaving she asks if he wants to come again.
The next time Alex sees Robert jogging in the woods, he draws his gun and aims it at Robert's back, but does not fire it. Alex later meets Susanne again while shopping. She tells him that she will be alone again that evening and that she wants him to visit her, which he does. She asks him whether he has a girlfriend, and he tells her that until recently he used to have, but that she was murdered, and that now he thinks day and night about killing the murderer. Susanne protests that he cannot do such a thing, and must not even think about it. But she understands now why Alex is so cold, and takes him to bed. In the night Susanne is wakened by the sound of a car engine. Robert has come home, and she urges Alex, lying next to her, to go. Robert, crying, tells Susanne that he has been declared unfit for duty and suspended from the police force. He shows her Tamara's photo, which he is unable to stop looking at. As Susanne goes to throw it away, she sees Alex leaving the house.
Some days later Alex is sitting on a bench by the lake in the woods and waiting for Robert. He jogs past, and sits on the bench with Alex. In the course of their conversation the subject of the bank robbery arises. Robert tells how the death of the young woman has preyed on his mind, and how he was aiming to shoot the tires. Alex asks if Robert is not afraid that the robber will come and shoot him, out of revenge. Robert's only comment is a resigned "He's welcome to." He gets up to leave but pauses to add that he would like to ask the bankrobber why he took the woman with him in the first place: "the whole mess wouldn't have happened if the woman hadn't been in that car without any reason." When Robert is out of sight, Alex throws his gun into the lake. That evening Susanne tells her husband that at last she is pregnant.
On Sunday Susanne calls again to take Hausner to church, but he is in hospital and only Alex is at home. She asks him to consider their affair at an end, and not to tell her husband about it, and Alex promises this. Susanne then sees Alex's photo of Tamara on the table, and in a moment of insight the connections suddenly become clear to her. At the end the two come to an understanding. The last scene is of Alex collecting fallen apples into a big basket.

Tags: romantic, revenge

Review:
Caught in the middle is Ursula Strauss, who plays Susanne, Robert's wife.The story starts out in the squalid world of Viennese prostitution, at a tacky brothel on the periphery.
Alex works for the local prostitution boss and he has fallen in love with one of the Eastern European streetwalkers, Tamara, played by Irina Potapenko.
But if the surrounding become simpler, the interaction does not, as Alex becomes entangled in the lives of the small town police office and his wife.The film is satisfying on many levels.
The name "revanche" has a double meaning in German, both revenge and a return match or a second chance, and it seems that both of these ideas are being developed throughout the story, as characters juggle their need to get even with their desire to secure their own futures.
Yet, if fate controls the characters' destinies, it is the strength of willpower that will decide who survives and who will fade into insignificance.Revanche did not get nominated in any categories for the EFA awards in 2008, but it is Austria's entry for the Oscar Foreign Language film nomination in 2009..
The first couple is on the edge of Vienna and the other lives in the country, but circumstances bring them together.The action begins with Alex (Johannes Krisch) and his Ukrainian prostitute girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko) in Vienna.
When Alex goes to stay with Hauser, it seems almost that he's fallen off the map that includes the prostitutes and the scummy underside of Viennese life.Alongside Alex's story is that of the policeman, Robert, who seems unable to give his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) a baby; too bad, because they both want one.
But things get complicated, people talk,and that changes.Revanche builds on coincidence but in ways so rooted in gritty milieu and so gnarly and unexpected they really seem to emerge not from a writer's brainstorm but the downright mind boggling absurdity of real life.
A love in the underworld between Russian prostitute Tamara (Irina Potapenko) and bordello body-guard Alex (Johannes Krisch) leads them to embrace the perspective of escape from the harsh realities of debts owed to crime bosses.
However grief turns to concepts of vengeance, when it turns out that Robert and his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) are neighbours.Starting off from a seedy, hopeless love affair, after a few scenes certainty of an emotional train-ride becomes evident.
As Alex, Robert and Susanne interact questions raised reach satisfying, if uneasy, conclusions, as a full circle is reached, making this one of the most poignant movies on the question of revenge, much detached from the typical Hollywood or Hong Kong take on the matter.The story has a unmistakable natural flow (partly owed to the settings and the camera-work), as happenings build the story without effort or forced connections.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film last year, it is just now making its way to Dallas - one of the few downsides to not living in NYC.What I love is the subtle approach of the filmmaker, director Gotz Spielmann, who obviously is a keen observer of people - moreso, I would guess, than a film buff.
As a viewer, we thoroughly believe this story would play out this way because these people are reacting to real situations.Johannes Krisch is captivating and powerful as Alex, one of the brutes working at a brothel.
That's when things get really interesting.Alex is thrown unexpectedly into the real life of police officer Robert (Andreas Lust) and his wife Susanne (fascinating acting from Ursula Strauss).
The coincidences lead to a touch of comedy and also some real soul searching from Robert, Susanne and Alex.The film could have ended about three different ways and I couldn't have been more happy with what we get.
You don't really think about these reservations as you are watching Austrian director-producer-screenwriter Götz Spielmann's quietly fascinating film, "Revanche." The one-word title in French translates to 'revenge.' But this is hardly your usual action thriller, though there are anxious suspenseful moments and bank heist involved.Love the film.
The four main roles are so solidly portrayed: Alex by Johannes Krisch and his girlfriend Tamara by Irina Potapenko; Robert the policeman by Andreas Lust and his wife Susanne by Ursula Strauss.
I actually appreciate this film more than the winning 2008 Oscar foreign film "Departures" - well, it's different in story layers and 'Departures' encompasses many aspects, while "Revanche" also has its layers of emotions, psychological human nature perspectives, is delivered 'clean' and focused, ever so naturally acceptable of human foibles, vulnerability and one woman's life force.
As seen at the AFI Film Festival, Revanche is a tight thriller that is  at a the same time a mood piece and a human moral drama.
i saw that movie and should say that i am going to watch it again many times as it is just thrilling and stunning as it could possibly be despite of being primarily about just ordinary people lives.and yet it is truly a masterpiece and it is a shame that it did not get an Oscar, probably other nominators were quite competitive.there is no need to tell about the plot and the background of it.
it is pretty ordinary (and that probably makes it quite realistic) so it could have happened everywhere and not just in Austria and so it applies to the main characters.the key word for that movie is imperfect (yet i still believe that movie itself is excellent) that nothing is perfect or ideal and people always make mistakes and if something may go wrong it will definitely go wrong.because we are human beings after all - with our emotions, irrational thinking, affections, etc.
Writer/Director Martin Gschlacht offers up a tale of crime and revenge from Austria in a good looking cinematic presentation although the story set up is a little long and characters you expect to return are discarded.
With Ursala Strauss as the shopkeeper Susanne and Andreas Lust as her policeman husband Robert this is a good film but would carry a strong R rating for nudity and sexual situations.
A quietly compelling, suspenseful film about the ability of the human being to redeem themselves through understanding, Revanche would probably be frustrating to those accustomed to the Multiplex thriller full of quick cuts, revved-up music and one explosion after another.
Like the author Dickens, director Spielman contrasts the gritty, downbeat lowlife in the big city with the honest toil and rich rewards of the country, and although the film starts to be about a simple bank heist, it becomes something else entirely; chopping wood becomes punctuation to the internal road the main character takes to self-understanding--while realizing that this is quite a heap of philosophy to lay on what becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller, there are plenty of surprises in store for the patient viewer who wants a film of some maturity and depth.
Again, this is a slow-moving, character-driven folk tale about the outcome of a botched bank robbery, if you can imagine such a thing.Acting -- Johannes Krisch as Alex is spellbinding.
This Austrian drama starts as a love story between a scruffy ex-con and a Ukranian prostitute, but evolves into an interesting character study.
It is a film that not only challenges you to predict what comes next, but one that forces you to decide whether revenge ever makes sense, to confront feelings of anguish and make decisions you can live with.
Credit also goes to Johannes Thanheiser as Alex's grandfather, a man for whom life is much the same each day, yet this is no reason to complain, and Ursula Strauss as Susanne, who, as Robert's wife, must balance her role as supporter in difficult times with her needs as a woman.Ultimately, the film leaves the viewer to tie up the loose ends, inviting comment on the drama that has unfolded.
But, as this movie illustrates, the details of such an incident and its aftermath can be surprising and interesting.The movie starts with Alex and Tamara working in a seedy Vienna brothel.
The realistic behind the scenes look at the brothel, run by a tyrannical pimp, was enough for me to understand why Alex and Tamara were desperate to escape and, when Alex proposed the bank robbery, I could well understand his motivation, since it was not going to be easy for either Alex or Tamara to get out of the rather sorry state they were in.What sets this thriller apart is that we get to know all of the main players--Alex, Tamara, the policeman and his wife, and Alex's grandfather-- as believable people.
Their interactions are well motivated and understandable.As the title suggests, the movie has important things to say about revenge, about snap judgments and false assumptions.I found some of the filming techniques interesting.
To improve their life and pay off Tamara's debts, Alex decides to rob a bank and things get out of control when a policeman shows up on his getaway.
It's a drama movie that creates tensions and the revenge story was told in a different suspenseful way.
There is actually something from the Haneke style in this film, with a story where chance may lead to tragedy and with the world of dark secrets hidden under the appearances of quite and banal lives.Two distinct worlds are presented in Revanche.
"Revanche," Austria's 2009 nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film, is a structured, yet unpredictable psychological thriller.
Writer/director Götz Spielmann reveals himself to the cinematic community and movie goers to be a fantastic storyteller, and a master of his craft."Revanche" is a slow, methodical film, much like its lead character Alex (Johannes Krisch), who decides to rob a bank with his girlfriend, Tamara (Irina Poapenko).
Tamara wants out for the prostitution business and away from her pimp, Konecy (Hanno Poschl), and Alex is riddled in debt and works in Konecy's brothel as a bodyguard.
Despite Alex's plan, the robbery goes wrong, and when speeding away from the scene, police officer Robert (Andreas Lust), shoots--aiming for the tires, but instead kills Tamara.
In the matter of the relativity of good and evil the Austrian movie depicts in an authentic (milieu and natural tongue)way something similar like the action-loaded "The Departed" (2008).
REVANCHE; Austria entry for the Oscars is a movie that starts pretty interesting; but after while; when the situation is completely presented, the pace slow down causing more tedium than suspense.There is a failed robbery; an accidental killing and a vengeance prospect; but besides the very forced setup; there is nothing else original or unexpected in it.
Beautiful photography and no music -- I was enraptured.Since they are making me write more lines, I am going to paste my review here again:But it's definitely the first time I've posted on the IMDb. This movie's supremely visual; it looks like what would happen if my favorite directors got together: Carl Th. Dreyer, Michelangelo Antonioni, Bela Tarr.
Alex discovers Robert is living nearby and has an affair with his wife Susanne.I really love the direction of the first part of the movie.
Basically, the film is too slow, and gives the viewer nothing but tedious viewing.Johannes Krisch I thought was great as Alex, for the most part, but some of his 'angry, upset' scenes seemed overacted.
He reminded me of Robert Carlyle for some reason...looks like him I suppose.I just thought Revanche should of been better, its just too slow and doesn't really offer anything.Revanche is one of those films that was promising but was let down by a poor plot and once too often the director has scenes of boring dialogue and a slow paced build up to the ending.And as for the ending......was it an ending?.
Perhaps that's not the point of the story - a "just" revenge - but there was no other emotional engagement either that compelled me to care about what happened.I really have a hard time seeing why this movie has such a high rating.
Celebrated Austrian writer and director Götz Spielmann's 2008 revenge thriller Revanche premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival to critical acclaim.
The film begins with an ex-con (Johannes Krisch) and his Russian prostitute girlfriend (Irina Potapenko) wanting to escape from their lousy lives in Vienna.
The second half of the film introduces some other major characters, most important a police officer (Andreas Lust), who encounters the man and woman right after they rob the bank, and his grocery clerk wife (Ursula Strauss), who is having some problems with her marriage.
As I said above, however, it was hard to like the characters and so much nudity makes it a very good film that many won't ever get to see.
Even though Alex had tried to dissuade Tamara from joining him on the bank job, he was clearly shaken by Alex's unknowing accusation.Susanne's character was also nuanced — someone who was a rescuer (in a good way), her attempts to protect her husband while also getting what she wanted, were compelling.This, for me, has been one of the better movies of the year.
The scheming ends with a decision by Alex (Johannes Krisch), a middle-aged janitor and go-for at a Vienna brothel, to rob a bank in order to pay off the debts of his girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko), a Ukrainian prostitute.
A married woman, who lives nearby, Susanne (Ursula Strauss), visits the grandfather, encourages him to play his accordion, and accompanies him to church.Now things begin to fall into place, from the perspective of the viewer though not initially from that of the characters.
Susanne's husband, Robert (Andreas Lust), is the policeman who accidentally shot and killed Tamara.
"Revanche" assumes it meaning, in German, of second chance as well as revenge.This summary does not do justice to the consistent excellence of the film's acting and direction.
There are a lot of "second chances" in this Oscar nominated film.Alex (Johannes Krisch) wants to give Tamara (Irina Potapenko) a second chance to escape her life of prostitution.
He also wants a second chance with his father (Johannes Thanheiser).Unfortunately, life is what happens when you are making other plans, and the encounter with the policeman Robert (Andreas Lust) ruins Alex's plans.Revanche also means "revenge." You can see the slow burning of Alex as he broods over the loss of Tamara.
Even when the policeman's wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) tries to get intimate with him, he has sex, but treats her like dirt.What Alex doesn't realize until he and Robert meet is that Robert is grieving as much as he is.
He shot Tamara by accident and is aching over her death.There was some outstanding acting by all the characters in this film.
The story is set in modern-day Austria where the protagonist, Alex, is working maintenance in a brothel and is in a relationship with Tamara, one of the prostitutes there who hails from Ukraine.
Alex successfully sticks up the bank, but a police officer (Robert) just happens to come along and questions Tamara who's sitting in the getaway car.
Robert leaves Tamara's body inside the car and abandons it in a forest.The second half of the movie is much more slow-paced than the first.
In turn, he confesses to Susanne that he was the bank robber and presumably their secret is safe with him.While I was disappointed that Revanche did not have a slam-bang twist ending, I was relieved at the same time that Alex did not resort to the ugly act of killing Robert.
In Spiellman's world, people make bad decisions: Alex concocts the robbery, Tamara goes along with it, Robert fires at a vehicle moving away from him, in violation of procedures and Susanne commits adultery by having an affair.
I never would have thought I would see this 2009 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language film on a plane."Revanche" is an Austrian movie, though it could have been made anywhere else.
It is basically about four people: from the city, an Ukranian prostitute Tamara (Irina Potapenko) and her thug boyfriend Alex (Johannes Krische), and in the countryside, an honest cop Robert (Andreas Lust) and his friendly wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss).
"Revanche" is a German-language movie from 7 years ago and, together with "Antares", the most known work by Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann.
As much as I liked looking at the stunning Irina Potapenko, they certainly could have kept these sequences at 30 minutes max and, consequently, the film at 100 minutes.There is absolutely nothing wrong with the acting here: Krisch, Lust, Strauss, the aforementioned Potapenko and Thanheiser delivered from start to finish, even if Thanheiser's character did not really add that much to me for the movie.
He may not have lost a loved one, but he suffers almost the same as Krisch's character, emotionally and professionally."Revanche" is not among my top5 favorite non English films from 2008, but I still recommend the watch.
The revenge/revanche story is pretty good (no spoiler here, the clue is/was in the title), but for all it's slow moving pace and great ideas that the movie has, it has one big let down ...
Here revenge is used in a different and ultimately redemptive way.Early in the film the camera lingers on a street scene.
This is just the case with Austrian "Revanche", an incredibly dull and slow movie coming from nowhere and leading nowhere.Nothing is right here.
This is a revenge story of Ex-con Alex who is in love with a prostitute Tamara, and wants to escape with her after robbing a bank.
It would have made the film even better and fast paced.Alex figures out that, Robert is the neighbor of his grandfather after he comes to live with his father.
But, the way things turn out in the end is very different from the usual revenge movies I've seen.
I do not have a problem with slow paced movies, but it may be a problem with some viewers.Good film but it could have been great, had it been a bit fast.paced.