Revenge, directed by Coralie Fargeat, might be our nastiest movie
yet. It has the single grossest and most intense moment of any movie we’ve covered so far. Revenge is a French rape-revenge movie, so be
warned right now: this is not a movie for anybody who cannot handle sexual
violence. It is also not a movie for you if you’re not down for extreme gore. Do not take your Grandma to this one.
That said, Revenge is a thrilling great
time. Have I gone full sicko on you all? This rapesploitation movie is fun to me? Well, this isn't a dour movie. Revenge has a lurid
color pallet. It heavily sexualizes both its male and female characters – lots of
ass close-ups. It employs big, unsubtle symbolism. A Granny Smith Apple turns
rotten overnight. Drops of blood raining down on the sand drown ants. By the
end, its heroine has become a comic book hero, with her own cool costume and badass
swagger. She cuts a killer profile on the page. Revenge is a movie with grit and guts
(guts hanging out, in fact), but is not too committed to realism. This is fantasy action.
Let us be clear though, Revenge is not downplaying the utter awfulness of its premise. This is a movie with a moment of sexual violence that is not at all enjoyable to watch. It wants you disgusted by that act and to know that pain. Then it wants you to take that pain and go on a thrill ride of vengeance and catharsis.
We have four principal characters in the
cast, all on vacation in a fancy glass chateau on the edge of the
desert. They're out just far enough that nobody can hear them scream. Our heroine is Jen (Matilda
Lutz), the young trophy girlfriend to a handsome and sinister married businessman, Richard (Kevin
Janssens). Jen and Richard’s weekend of luxury and sex is interrupted by
Richard’s two schlubby hunting buddies, Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume
Bouchède) arriving early. Jen still puts on a good show entertaining them. That is until the morning, when Stan decides he wants more than polite flirting and he’s
going to take it, no matter what Jen says. From there, the weekend devolves
into a bloodbath. They're slipping on blood-soaked floors by the end.
Faced with Stan’s awful crime, neither other man does the
right thing. Dimitri walks away, turns the TV up louder, to pretend nothing is
happening. Richard offers Jen a crooked job as compensation, but she must keep
her mouth shut. When Jen will not take the deal, Richard throws her off a
cliff. She gets impaled through the side on a petrified corpse of a tree,
and left for dead. The grim realist version of this story would probably have
ended with Jen taking the job, having trouble sleeping, and taking medication for anxiety. The EC comics
horror version of this story instead has Jen coming back to life, her zombie exacting
supernatural justice.
Revenge hews a bit closer to the latter. There is no
blue-skinned zombie Jen, shambling along, carrying the heads of those who
wronged her. But Jen does in a way return from the dead. With the help of some
Chekov’s peyote to dull the pain, she is able to pull out the branch in her stomach. She then
cauterizes the wound using gunpowder and a Mexican beer can, permanently
tattooing her belly with an eagle design. That kind of sick biker iconography
combined with her red costume star earrings, booty shorts, and of course,
a huge rifle, turns Jen into an action star. We're in the realm of psychedelia pulp now, not realism.
The titular revenge is never a simple task. Jen might look
the part but she isn’t a superhero, but she is getting better at it with every kill. None of the three men are
easy boss fights. They all very nearly get the jump on her. Two probably had her dead
to rights but needed to show off and gloat about their masculine prowess…
before that prowess is torn right off of them, figuratively. (I’m actually
surprised there's no dick gore, considering Revenge has just about
everything else.) Richard gets the ultimate humiliation of having to fight
entirely naked and gushing blood, his torso held together with plastic wrap.
Revenge saves its nastiest gore for the men. Jen’s revenge
upon their bodies is fittingly ironic. Dimitri looked away, so he gets Xs
stabbed through his eyes. Richard had Jen impaled, so his stomach is blasted
open by a shotgun blast. The worst comes to Stan, the one
who raped her. His foot is gashed open in an unforgettably shocking moment. But
notably, the gash in his foot is slit-shaped. Jen inflicts a bleeding yonic wound, forcing Stan to violate himself with his own filthy fingers.
I need a drink after describing that scene. Oof. Better hope your mom doesn't walk in on you when that scene plays, that's a long conversation to have.
But you know what? I have no qualms loving Revenge. This is a super stylish fantasy. Revenge is taking the patriarchy and tearing off its head and then drinking its blood, then puking the blood back down the bloody stump of its neck. Revenge spits on the grave of the male gaze. It is gleefully swimming in nastiness for empowerment. This movie loves the nasty. Coralie Fargeat stages dream sequences for no reason other than to construct an awesome head explosion gore gag. It's just fun.
Next time we travel to 2019, the year of going on a hike with a baby in Death Stranding, taking my horse down the Old Town Road, and our next movie, La Llorona. (The Guatemalan one.)
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