Revenge

The kick in the pants that exploitation films needs.

Final rating:★★★½ - I really liked it. Would strongly recommend you give it your time.

Revenge had so much going for it. The acting was surprisingly good. The symbolism was well done. She actually looked like she'd gone through hell in the desert with dirty hair and grime. Camerawork and the setting was outstanding. Unfortunately the first conflict, which is the basis for the rest of the movie, ended up being way over the top and completely unbelievable. Not to mention the ridiculous amounts of blood everywhere. I wanted more relatable believability and less pointless gore.

Gory, but brilliant

It was very important for Jen to be fully objectified at the beginning of the film, to show that she is at ease with her body and how she uses it, at ease with how she seduces men and attracts male attention. But what I'm trying to get across is that this is not the problem, but rather that the male characters believe that the way she looks authorises them to treat her as though she is to be used and then disposed of like a worthless piece of rubbish. The male gaze in film often implies that women are to blame for acts of sexual violence committed against them, which is deeply problematic. Through each male character, I wanted to show the different abusive behaviours that, to a large extent, have become normalised in today's society.

• Coralie Fargeat; "Exclusive Interview with Revenge Director Coralie Fargeat"; Bird's Eye View (December 5, 2018)

Jen (a superb Matilda Lutz) and her married lover Richard (Kevin Janssens) are enjoying a romantic weekend in his isolated house in the desert. However, shortly after they arrive, Richard's friends, Stan (Vincent Colombe), Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède), and Roberto (Jean-Louis Tribes) show up unannounced, urging Richard to join them on a hunting trip. As tension mounts in the house, Stan rapes Jen, but when she says she is going to go to the police, and to alert Richard's wife of his affair, the men attack her and leave her for dead. However, unbeknownst to them, she survives the assault, and has set on revenge.

Very much in the vein of films such as Sam Peckingpah's Strawdogs (1971) and Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave (1978), Revenge is an insanely gory rape-revenge thriller. In her feature debut, writer/director Coralie Fargeat displays an astonishing visual panache as she reappropriates this exploitative sub-genre for the post #MeToo era. From the expansive Ford-esque vistas of the desert to the claustrophobic and labyrinthine finale, her visual language is as dex...

SPOILER REVIEW For the first half hour or so the movie looks like being your standard revenge thriller, but then the tone of the movie takes a dramatic unexpected shift.

It's at this point our protagonist, Jen, falls off a cliff and lands onto a tree below in which a branch impales her through the back and out through her midriff. After what in all seriousness should've been a fatal fall you're left thinking; "Surely she's dead, right?" I mean, I know action flicks are far fetched, but surely they aren't gonna just write this off as the equivalent to a grazed knee. Half an hour in and you've seemingly killed off the main character, hmm. Is her identical twin or ghost or something going to take revenge, you're left wondering? Even if she were somehow to miraculously survive, there's no way she'd be in any condition to take Revenge.

Alas, she does survive and she finds a novel way to free herself from the tree she is impaled and suspended from. Note: this is the part in the movie when you turn your brain off. After bleeding out for hours in the desert heat, our heroine spots a lighter on the ground within reaching distance. Remember this part; she's in reaching distance from the ground, got that! She comes to the conclusion that the best way to free herself is to burn the tree down. That's right, she's going to burn the tree down of which she is impaled just feet from the ground where a fire is burning below her. Genius! Anyway, her big brained plan actually works and she manages to get down without burning herself alive.

Skip ahead to where she needs to patch herself up. Next task is to fix the gaping wound running through her body. She finds a cave after acquiring some supplies and you're thinking the 'Rambo scene' must be coming up where she cauterizes the wound. Now I'm no stranger to suspending my disbelief, but what happens next defies all logic and reason. She recalls she stashed some peyote in her locket from earlier. According to her n...