Revanche

 An internet staple is posting about the ends of movies.  This content is "water-cooler" gossip to use a phrase probably unfamiliar to many younger readers.  The water-cooler was a place in the office where workers would congregate to chat about recent events.  In my lifetime, most events of interest to people were broadcast on TV; we saw them the night before.  Thus, workers were gather around the water-cooler to discuss TV shows that they had just watched or sporting events or, even, popular movies.  Colleagues compared notes and developed a sort of consensus about the merits of the shows that they had seen and, further, would speculate as to the meaning of sequences in the broadcast that were unclear, puzzling, or enigmatic.  Most workplaces today don't have water-coolers -- people drink bottled water grabbed from the fridge -- and the chatter of the collegial office, with various secretaries mingling with bosses and clerks at some central location, is also, alas, a thing of the past.  The proverbial water-cooler is now extinct and, indeed, with it, the idle gossip swirling around it -- and, it may be that the densely populated workplaces that existed even three years ago with their cubicles and wandering supervisors and busy word-processing and copy collation and mail rooms are all things of the past, killed by COVID-19 and, perhaps, never to revive.  But, in lieu, of the water-cooler, there are numerous casually written and jaunty websites where readers can learn the plots of TV shows that they may have missed and follow their favorite celebrities.  Many of these sites even feature detailed, shot by shot analysis of controversial scenes in Tv shows and movie as well as explication of puzzling denouement in Netflix series (such as Ozark and Better Call Saul) -- these postings purport to explain baffling features in programs that consumers have watched.  This is a lengthy predicate for the proposition that I would like to find a internet posting that explains to me Revanche, Goetz Spielmann's 2008 crime picture.  And, I don't need an explanation of the end of the movie -- that seems pretty clear to me.  Rather, I would like someone to explain the show's first shot.

Revanche is an austere, but gripping Austrian film.  The movie is very lucidly shot in long, carefully composed sequences, mostly filmed with an immobile camera.  The picture divides into an opening forty minutes that is gritty, urban, and sordid -- the movie involves an exploited Ukrainian prostitute working in a brothel in Vienna and her hapless, dull-witted boyfriend, a penny-ante Austrian criminal.  The second two-thirds of the film take place in Vienna's Waldviertel -- that is, the sector of agricultural land, partly wooded and decorated by small lakes immediately outside of the big city.  In some respects, the shape of the movie is similar to Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground, a film involving crime in a nameless noir city (all neon lights reflected in puddles, glaring police interrogation rooms and wet dank alleys) that sloshes over into similarly a cheerless and snowy mountain town (Leadville, Colorado).  The consequences of the brutish behavior in Vienna infects the rural environs in which the last two-thirds of the movie takes place.  As one would expect from a film set in Vienna and its neighboring woods, the picture is aggressively sexual with lots of naked girls, joyless copulation, and a general undercurrent of erotic anxiety.  In some respects, the movie resembles a mixture of Fassbinder's notion of love as a battlefield in which power dominates libido and Michael Haneke's cruel and dispassionate objectivity -- you are always anticipating that something terrible and unexpected will suddenly occur.  

Alex is in love with Tamara, Ukrainian prostitute who is indentured to a vicious brothel-owner.  (The name of the place is Cinderella).  Tamara owes the boss $30,000, probably for smuggling her out of Ukraine and she's working off her debt in the whorehouse and, also, on the streets.  Alex is a jack-of-all trades in the brothel -- he lugs cases of beer around, sets out towels, and provides muscle when necessary; he's not a knight in shining armor -- we see that he's not above roughing-up a girl who would prefer to sleep late as opposed to servicing the icy middle-aged men who frequent the joint.  The boss proposes that Tamara agree to work as a more elite call-girl and he offers to set her up in an apartment for a higher class of clientele.  Tamara, however, is plotting to escape with Alex who has a pipe-dream about setting up a bar with her in Ibiza.  The boss is a bad guy -- he demands oral sex from Tamara who is about to oblige when he tells her "No, my loss your gain", a weird refrain (I don't know what he's saying in German) that means something like:  "I could force you to do this, but it's really not worth my time and effort.  When Tamara resists the idea of operating out of an apartment (she's living in a hotel run by the boss that is really just a spartan jail -- the front desk workers keep tabs on the girls as they come and go), the brothel-keeper has a customer beat her up -- to "break her."  Alex intervenes and gives the bully a thrashing.  This upsets the boss, but boys will be boys, and Alex has to apologize and shake hands with the guy who was charged with battering his girlfriend. -- the men after all are colleagues and will work things out among them. Alex has figured-out a way to evade hotel security and, with Tamara, the couple escapes to the country.  We have learned that Alex has a grandfather, Mr. Housner, who lives on a farm with some dairy cattle -- Alex' grandmother has just died and the old man is very lonely.  The old man despised Alex whom he correctly regards as a ne'er-do-well -- Alex didn't attend his grandmother's funeral because he was in jail.  

Alex has devised an idiotic plot to rob the small-town bank near where his grandfather lives.  The robbery, of course, is botched and poor Tamara, who is along for the ride, is accidentally shot and dies.  The cop who pulled the trigger, Robert, is an athletic young man with some problems of his own.  His wife has just suffered a miscarriage and he is working nights and neglecting his duties at home.  (Robert's wife, Susi, runs a grocery store and she has despaired of getting pregnant -- she proposes to Robert that they adopt but he says no:  "you don't know who you're getting when you adopt and the kid will turn out to be a bad apple," the rather judgmental policeman tells her.  (Soon enough the joke will be on him.) Susi is also pressured to have a baby by Robert's condescending mother -- when Susi says that the fertility problem is not hers, Robert's mother responds with a non sequitur:  "But he's so athletic."  Somehow, Alex escapes and isn't even suspected for the botched bank robbery -- the identity of poor Tamara is difficult to establish since she may be an illegal immigrant and Alex has kept her passport.  One of the picture's strengths is its convincing portrait of a small town where everyone knows everyone else and their families.  The cops form a "good old boy" club (it has a couple of female members too) and they are always drinking beer, barbecuing, and and target shooting.  All of the cops have pregnant wives or several children.  Susi is a devout Catholic as is Mr. Hausner, Alex's curmudgeonly grandfather.  Susi takes Mr. Hausner to church each Sunday and forms an interest in the bad boy, Alex.  (He's obsessively brooding about Tamara's death and using a hideously dangerous-looking circular saw to cut up an enormous stack of logs -- he's making firewood for grandpa.)  Susi invites Alex to her house -- Robert is working the night-shift.  They have sex, although Susi wonders why Alex is so cold and inhuman:  "Someone must have done something to you," she muses.  Alex has a gun and he learns that Robert shot Tamara in the bank-heist (he was aiming for the tires).  Alex knows that Robert goes running every day, a trail that leads into the woods and to a rather desolate lake -- we hear a loon cackling unseen at the pond.  Alex plans to kill Robert as revenge for the death of Tamara.  And, so, the film moves inexorably toward its climax.  By this time, Susi is pregnant with Alex's child and, mission accomplished, ends the nocturnal relationship with Alex -- she's been having sex with him in the nursery that she and Robert outfitted for the baby that she miscarried.  

(Spoilers follow:)  Revanche is very skillfully acted and its somewhat baroque plot seems plausible within the confines of the movie.  There is a wonderful scene in which Susi transfixes Alex with her gaze and we immediately understand what she is planning to do.  Susi is more than a little spooky -- she's extremely matter-of-fact and laughs oddly at moments when we would expect her to cry.  (She's very believable as a cop's wife -- she's competent, taciturn, and remote.).  Robert is suffering from remorse and post-traumatic stress from the shooting and seems completely miserable and helpless. Alex is unpredictable and a little sadistic -- he loves terrifying Tamara and seems frighteningly impulsive -- there's no reason for Tamara to be at the bank robbery which results in her death. Ultimately, Alex confronts Robert, although the shooting is mentioned obliquely and its not clear that the young cop knows what Alex means with his vague diatribe.  Alex decides to forego revenge and he throws the gun into the lake.  We see the weapon splash in the water and sink and, then, a wild gust of wind makes white the glassy surface of the lake.  It's as if God is somehow commenting on Alex' decision to renounce vengeance -- something that Susi, of course, has pressed upon him.  The scene with the gun sinking into the water rhymes with the very long opening shot -- we see the lake, hear thunder, and the water looks black and menacing.  Suddenly, something splashes into the lake --it's shocking and you half jump out of your seat.  The shot is held for another thirty seconds as the ripples gradually subside.  But there is no violent gust of wind that turns the mirror of the water into a pale frothy sheet.  So what is it that is dropped into the lake in the opening shot?  The two images don't match.  At the end of the film, Alex resigned to working on his grandfather's farm (the old man has died) is seen forking hay to the cows.  We hear thunder.  The thunder connects the last shot with the bleak opening image -- but the puzzle remains as to what is thrown into the water in the first shot; Spielmann, the director, has taken care to shoot the film so that the two shots of something dropped into the pond do not match.  Revanche, of course, means "revenge" -- but it's not clear what revenge is here meant.  Obviously, Alex plots revenge on Robert, but what exactly is Susi doing -- is she taking some kind of revenge on Robert for his infertility and, for the fact, that the local code of machismo requires that she take the blame for their childlessness?  And is Mr. Hausner involved in some sort of revenge on his grandson?  There are many possibilities and the movie's strength is that it doesn't require us to choose between these possibilities.  

This is a splendid movie, very closely observed, and rich with intricate detail.  It's the sort of movie that sticks in your mind, that you re-play and that seems better as imagined than when the movie was underway.   I recommend this film.