Douchebag businessman Richard (Kevin Janssens) charters a helicopter in order to take his mistress Jen (Matilda Lutz) to his swanky holiday pad in the desert for some extracurricular activity. The next day, Richard’s friends Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède) arrive, with the three men intending to go off on a hunting trip. That evening, the four of them party; they drink far too much and Jen, in her inebriated state, dances for the guys as a bit of fun. This is something which Stan is, inevitably, going to misread entirely.
With Richard away the following morning, Stan sees his chance to move in on Jen, but when she rejects his advances he turns aggressive. When Jen tells Stan to stop, he doesn’t and goes on to rape her. Dimitri sees and hears the assault but chooses not to step in. When Richard returns, he learns of what has happened, but rather than call the cops on Stan, he suggests that Jen should move to Canada and that he will finance it. When Jen threatens to reveal Richard’s philandering ways to his wife, he slaps her, she tries to flee and, in the ensuing mayhem, the men think they’ve killed her and that they’ll be out of there before anyone discovers the body. Wrong.
Before Coralie Fargeat delighted/disgusted audiences with The Substance, she brought her unique sensibilities to the rape/revenge thriller, pitching the gross goings on against a glossy backdrop and throwing multiple buckets of blood over the whole thing (apparently, the production kept running out of said, er, substance). It’s more in line with I Spit On Your Grave than Promising Young Woman in the way that justice is meted out via a traditionally male series of shootings and stabbings, but the extended sequences of extreme violence set a high watermark for a subgenre that wasn’t known for skimping on the claret to begin with.
Absent is the sickly voyeurism which accompanies a number of thrillers of this ilk, its inciting act kept offscreen for the most part and amplified in its power by the lack of explicit visual detail but an abundance of dreadful, accompanying sound. We follow Dimitri around the house and into the pool, intercut with shots of Jen’s hand pounding the bedroom window. He may not be the one attacking Jen, but he’s complicit in the crime and just as awful in his own, shameful way, turning up the volume on the TV to block out the noise coming from elsewhere and then thinking that hiding underwater will do the trick.
It’s difficult to know who Jen should kill first once her transformation into grime-coated, rifle-toting avenger is complete, because the three married man in her path are all reprehensible: Stan for being the average guy for whom the word “no” means nothing of the sort; Dimitri for cramming chocolate marshmallows into his slobbering mouth in disgusting close-up and facilitating the horrendous behaviour of his friends; and Richard, a guy who knows he’s hot, emphasises his sense of importance and thinks he can wipe away Jen’s indelible memory of her assault by essentially paying her to keep quiet.
It’s to the credit of Janssens, Colombe and Bouchède – and Fargeat’s dialogue – that each convinces as three totally different men who would nevertheless enjoy each other’s company, knows their place within their local hierarchy and have each other’s back, regardless of how heinous their behaviour became. Lutz, initially appearing to be the glam arm candy and slightly vapid good time girl, is quickly shown to be nothing of the sort, metamorphosing into audience pleasing worst nightmare for our trio of toxic males. Revenge is a movie that leans into familiar tropes and plays with the audience’s preconceived expectations before subverting them.
The second half of the movie sees tables turned and hunters becoming hunted, eschewing swift executions in favour of suspenseful, drawn out action set pieces which all have a sense of the ludicrous about them while being played dead straight. A notable synth score by the prolific Robin Coudert (who, as “Rob”, also provided the soundtrack for the Maniac remake, amongst other things) ramps up the genuine excitement as Jen goes head to head with her tormentors, with special effects artist Laetitia Quillery conjuring up a series of nauseating prosthetics. If you’re a bit squeamish about folks digging around in open wounds – and I suspect there’s a lot of us who are – prepare to get a damn good wince workout.
Ticking all of the exploitation movie boxes without ever feeling remotely exploitative, Revenge is a bold debut, its escalating carnage played out across exotic, sumptuous settings, beautifully lensed by Robrecht Heyvaert and culminating in a satisfying, final act showdown which is Grand Designs meets Grand Guignol. It’s hard to imagine a better calling card for Coralie Fargeat and her recent, satirical take on body horror builds on the style, shocks and taste for the outrageous to be found here.