To give you a taste of my coverage here’s my review of Revenge, my favorite film from the festival.
Revenge; Coralie Fargeat; France, 2017; 108 min
Both a satisfying film about a woman seeking bloody retribution for her rape, and a scathing commentary about men who cover up the horrific acts of other men, Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge is an emotionally challenging, yet gripping feature-length directorial debut that displays terrifying isolation, graphic violence, and mankind’s worst qualities in the tensest, most breathtaking cinematic format.
In Revenge, Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) travels to a remote vacation home with her boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens) for a romantic weekend before his buddies arrive to do big game hunting. Unaware that the married Richard would have a houseguest, Stan and Dimitri are shocked to find Jen there when they show up early. The pair are all too happy to flirt with her and drool all over her until Richard leaves, which is when Stan decides she should be with him too, and forces himself on her after she tries to deny his advances. When Richard returns and finds out he is furious, although not for the right reasons; he attempts to pay Jen off, or just dispose of her, so his wife won’t find out about his infidelity.
Fargeat doesn’t spend much time on the horrible act of rape itself, instead focusing more on the disgustingness of those that either ignore a woman under attack (Dimitri) or those who try to cover up the crime after the fact (Richard), people that the movie effectively argues are just as bad as rapists themselves because they normalize the rapists’ acts. This realization is a tough, but necessary one in the era of #MeToo, where men are learning that they need to believe women and lift up their voices instead of trying to silence them if things are going to truly change for the better.
Jen’s struggle to survive in the film is emblematic of the issue literally and metaphorically. She must overcome horrifying obstacles to live, but her quest to dispatch these men who won’t let her speak out is cathartic because they receive justice they might not normally have received in the real world. By the time the film ends, viewers can let out a sigh of relief, that at least these three guys receive their comeuppance, even if so many others in the world haven’t (yet).