Critics reviews

Revenge isn’t simply a rape-revenge thriller, it’s also an act of vengeance against a genre’s common misogyny.

But unlike the subversive art-house ordeal of Baise-Moi by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, or the showily sadistic pyrotechnics of Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible, Fargeat favours a camp, heightened, almost cartoonish approach. Revenge is part trashy exploitation flick, part Looney Tunes romp.

It’s intense and often excruciating to watch, but it’s also extremely satisfying as it allows us to live vicariously through a woman who delivers payback and then some to the men who viewed her as disposable. Fargeat displays a masterful balance of tone and pacing, as well as a super-stylish visual flair and a heightened ear for sound design. “Revenge” is shocking but not gratuitously so; surprisingly, it ends up becoming a feel-good tale of a woman enduring a series of horrific abuses and triumphantly coming into her own at the end.

Revenge is closer to subverting rape-revenge exploitation than many of its predecessors, perhaps because it was written and directed by a woman. Still, the film sets itself up for feminist failure by buying into the violent rape-revenge premise at all. While eye-for-an-eye violence can be cathartic in its own way, it’s emotionally hollow.

Equal parts feminist empowerment manifesto and raging red Grand Guignol heart-stopper, Revenge is, in the end, a dish best served up with cold blue steel and righteous rivers of sauce au sang.

This title, and set-up, suggest grimy exploitation and tired, sexist tropes. But first-time French director Coralie Fargeat has something more subtle in mind in this stylishly shot and seriously bloody take on the rape revenge, bringing a female sensibility to a genre that often leered.

For all of its carefully executed, cool style, soundtracked to a retro synth score and ironic music cuts, “Revenge” is intensely raw, a violent and hallucinatory acid trip for the senses that asserts a feminist perspective in this historically exploitative and misogynistic genre.

In other hands, this film could go kitsch, could all be a big joke, but Fargeat directs Lutz like no other Rambo-style action hero before her.

“Revenge” leaves a lurid, punchy afterimage, an impression somewhere between righteous delight and quivering revulsion. It’s both a challenge and a calling card, in which Ms. Fargeat at once exposes what’s wrong with her chosen genre and demonstrates her mastery of it.

The film’s slick editing, vibrant colours, and heavy soundtrack consistently emphasise how sexy and powerful she looks, but never at her expense: this is exactly the image she wants to project. Together with the many grotesquely gruesome moments of body horror, this aesthetic signals the film’s tangential relation to reality, and turns Revenge into an overwhelming and unshakeable sensory experience.

Fargeat is thoughtful about the elements of her genre, flagrant in her inversions of them but also ferocious in her commitment to them.

The French auteur has created what can only be described as pure cinematic euphoria through her visionary creativity... Beautiful, brutal, insane and glorious, Revenge is a tour de force of twisted creativity that the horror genre has not seen in years.