Revenge (2017)

Dig two graves

The rape revenge thriller is, historically, one of the scummiest subgenres of films. The most notorious example of the form is the 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave. It presents the formula in simple, horrifying terms: A young woman gets brutally and violently assaulted, then spends the rest of the film hunting down and killing those who perpetrated the cruelty. It’s a film so degrading that Roger Ebert spent his 0-star review belittling audiences who paid money to see it.

Given its provocative nature, it’s little surprise that the trope of a woman taking vengeance for sexual violence has been the subject of much investigation by filmmakers and scholars. The narrative is a common topic across the high art-low art spectrum: from critically acclaimed dramas through cheap exploitation Tubi trash.

Revenge, the 2017 debut of Coralie Fargeat, is not a subversion of the genre, along the lines of a Promising Young Woman, so much as it as a reclamation. It doesn’t change the broad outline of I Spit on Your Grave one iota, but it makes so many changes big and small within that framework that the end result is utterly transformed.

The film follows Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), a young woman who we learn in some of the film’s very sparse dialogue dreams of becoming an actress. She arrives, sunglass-clad and sucking a lollipop like Kubrick’s Lolita, at the luxurious desert vacation house owned by the wealthy, square-jawed Richard (Kevin Janssens). Richard has a wife and kids, and doesn’t bother hiding from Jen that she’s his side piece. Between bedroom sessions, he’s there for a hunting trip with his buddies.

The morning after a night of drinking and dancing, while Richard is out, one of Richard’s friends, Stan (Vincent Colombe) corners Jen to seduce her. She says “no.” He doesn’t take “no” for an answer. Another of Richard’s friends, Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède) declines to intervene, shrugging and retreating to the kitchen with disinterest.

Jen comes crying to Richard after she’s been raped, and she even threatens to call his wife and tattle about their affair if he doesn’t mete out punishment to Stan. Richard doesn’t like this: he retaliates, leaving her bloody and near death, impaled on a phallic tree branch. Very slowly, Jen escapes and stumbles towards both survival and that titular dish that will be served hot and scarred rather than cold.

So what, if anything, separates Revenge from the trashier and purely exploitative fare? For starters, the rape in question happens offscreen; cruelly, but quickly and without becoming the subject of the film’s gaze. Compare this to the 30 minutes of onscreen rape in I Spit On Your Grave; it doesn’t take a media studies doctorate to find the latter problematic at best: In depicting it in close-up, the audience becomes a participant in the depraved act themselves.

Second, Revenge avoids making its villains backwater redneck trash. From Deliverance through I Spit On Your Grave and beyond, the perpetrators of sexual violence in cinema are often deranged, uneducated, quasi-human lower-class scum. The caricatured, deviant nature of these characters make their crimes seem less human, less like something that could happen to a normal person in a normal place. In Revenge, it’s a wealthy businessman, handsome and stoic, who discards Jen; and one of his lackeys who violates her without pushback or punishment. By making the villains not rural ghouls but monsters hiding in plain sight of upright society, it makes their crimes more immediate and scary.

Third, and most importantly to the arthouse audience the film is aiming for, Fargeat applies truly remarkable filmmaking. Shot after shot is a gorgeous piece of composition and lighting. Early candy-coated hues transform into sprawling desert vistas. The color design is off the charts wonderful: Dry orange-yellows alternate with bile-soaked gem tones of blood and grime. The gore effects, especially the buckets of shining fake blood, are bravura levels of squirm-inducing. The film’s second and third acts have a hallucinatory, fantasy quality, as if everything we’re seeing could be Jen’s imagined death rattle rather than reality. All of this is amplified with some phenomenal sound design, punctuating the violence and danger and catharsis.

Lutz herself is a marvel as Jen; Fargeat frames her not with sexiness or eroticism but with admiration, as if she is Michaelangelo’s female David. She strafes around like an N64 Goldeneye character, her rifle planted on her shoulder, erect and dangerous. Lutz carves a striking image, time after time.

Revenge is a satisfying film and gets quite far in its mission of transforming the rape revenge thriller into something… not quite rah-rah feminist, but at least less dispiritingly obscene and degrading. The dark parts are indeed painful, but the end brings real catharsis. Bloody absolution. I’m very curious to see what Fargeat does in her sophomore effort, this year’s The Substance.

It’s still bound to its gutter narrative framework, but Revenge is pretty close to the most vibrant possible version of this story without breaking free of the shallow and tawdry shackles the premise places on it.

Is It Good?

Good (5/8)

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.