Revanche

Problems. Solutions. What happens when simple plans go terribly wrong or your perfect life lacks one component culturally representative of stability? Götz Spielmann's Revanche tackles tough problems and even tougher solutions in a concretely realistic fashion, developing dynamically hard-boiled characters in a complicated, nocturnal narrative. Ex-con Alex (Johannes Krisch) and his prostitute girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko) plan to rob a bank and escape to the South while husband and wife Robert (Andreas Lust) and Susanne (Ursula Strauss) struggle to have their first child. One poorly aimed bullet ruins one potential future while possibly consummating another; Robert does his best to cope while Alex works through his frustration. Revenge is in the works, but rather than showcasing its bloodthirsty desire, Spielmann lethargically allows it to steep, thereby using his characters to demonstrate a broad range of its associated affects. Functioning as a steadfast foil is Alex's grandfather Hausner (Johannes Thanheiser), constituted like a rock, embedded, providing age-old bits of timeless empirical wisdom to anyone fortunate enough to listen. Revanche certainly isn't pretty, and it doesn't deal with cookie-cutter subject matter as it evocatively unravels its panorama, definitive and lucid, decadent and deadly. Bizarre in its motivations and cryptic in its revelations, Revanche oddly functions as a formulaic compromise, conceptualizing high and low.