This review contains some very large Spoilers
This was a very pleasant surprise. About one quarter of the way through the film I was convinced that I wasn’t going to like it and that it was going to be a waste of my time. Not that anything in this first half hour was poorly done (that actually proved to be quite not the case), but because films about underground prostitution and abuse aren’t my cup of tea. I’ve never been impressed by a film focused on these themes, and it is generally a boring subject for me. Thus, I was very happy when, forty-five minutes into the film, there was a twist, and then another one five minutes later, that made me watch the movie in a completely different way than I had been. The sunshine and grass-mowing from the film’s opening shots comes back into play, the prostitution ring is left behind, and the film became a very taut study on loss, failure, revenge, and procreation. The title of the film translates to ‘Revenge,’ which not only contributes to many of the expectations that I had about where the film was going, but also to my reading of the film’s conclusion.
There are some moments where I lost a bit of confidence in the film, though. The first time is when Susanne, wife of Robert, the cop, tells Alex, the protagonist, to come by her house to sleep with her. Theoretically, this offer makes sense given the film so far. But there are two things about it that I did not like. One, is that it really isn’t built up convincingly enough. Alex has been a complete asshole toward Susanne, and is honestly not appealing enough in my opinion to warrant interest from women like Tamara and Susanne. Perhaps the type of man that Alex is is considered desirable in Austria. It is somewhat justified when Alex’s grandfather tells him that he will have no problems finding a woman because he is a hard worker. Susanne has certainly noticed this, always coming by when Alex is chopping wood (He chops much wood in this film). But I was ultimately convinced that this plot point worked when i considered that Susanne probably thinks that Alex would bear children who look similar to Robert. Similar hair color, height, complexion. The other thing I didn’t like about this development in the film, though, was that it told me exactly where the rest of the film was going. From that moment on, I was just waiting for everything to fall into place. What had been a completely unpredictable film up to that point spilled its beans and then most of the mystery and tension was gone. I still enjoyed watching it all play out, though, and the idea of how Alex got his revenge on Robert was an interesting one, which, given Robert’s anxiety over his job as a cop and a husband, could prove more devastating than any physical harm would have.