{"id":27735,"date":"2018-04-05T02:08:34","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T06:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=27735"},"modified":"2018-04-05T02:09:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T06:09:00","slug":"revenge-2017-boston-underground-film-festival-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/05\/revenge-2017-boston-underground-film-festival-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge (2017) [Boston Underground Film Festival 2018]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On a trip with her married boyfriend, Jen gets raped by one of his friends and left for dead by the group.\u00a0 As she awakens, she decides to get revenge and goes after those who wronged her in a brutal manner.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, Revenge would be run of the mill brutal if the rape was seen and not heard in the way it is here.\u00a0 The scene cuts away from it, not showing the actual action but the sounds of what is not shown paired with a few furtive glances at the victim\u2019s eyes and hands create something that is more emotionally brutal than when all is shown.\u00a0 The coldness of it all, the reaction from another character shows how some aggressors get away with it while more than one person knows what they have done.\u00a0 This whole situation feels more brutal than the entirety of what comes after.\u00a0 The revenge part of the film is violent but feels less so after the emotional toll brought by the source for wanting revenge.\u00a0 The comeuppance the men involved in the rape and what follows get dealt is satisfying yes, but, except for the last part of the film, the last \u201cvictim\u201d, it feels like yes it is violent, but as a viewer there is a numbness at this point, at least for some viewers there will be.\u00a0 Fargeat creates a source for the revenge that feels more emotionally connected, less physically brutal and more mentally brutal, something a lot of rape\/revenge films do not do.<\/p>\n

The cast for Revenge originally looks to be led by Kevin Janssens as Richard, a man who doesn\u2019t come off as the greatest person from the start.\u00a0 However, this switches to Matilda Lutz as Jen as the film advances and she truly takes her life, and revenge, into her own hands.\u00a0 Janssens gives a performance that makes his character come off as utterly unlikable, conceited, and without remorse.\u00a0 His line delivery and body language give those vibes off right from the start.\u00a0 Matilda Lutz, for her part, comes off a bit ditzy at first, but her portrayal of Jen through the pivotal scene show a sudden growth for the character.\u00a0 Post being left for dead, Lutz gives Jen a strength in how she wants to survive and get revenge as well as what she is willing to do to get to her goals.\u00a0 She gives her character determination and a will to keep going that makes her tough lady and a character the viewer can root for in a film filled with despicable and dislikable people.\u00a0 She is the star here and is the main reason to watch Revenge.<\/p>\n

Supporting her work and her vengeance are the special makeup effects by artist Laetitia Quillery who does fantastically bloody work.\u00a0 By the end of the film, the viewer will wonder how some of these characters have managed to survive that long after being maimed this badly.\u00a0 The work on display looks great, gushy, and quite gross at times.\u00a0 Most of the effects pieces are realistic and look like they hurt.\u00a0 Quillery\u2019s work brings the visual horror to the film with great talent.<\/p>\n

All of this happens in a visual world created by the cinematography of Robrecht Heyvaert who makes everything look stunning yet in your face at times.\u00a0 The use of the inside of the house versus the yard and the desert shows a capacity to gives each space its own personality and look of their own.\u00a0 This helps establish each scenes and the mood of the film, from the cozy and warm start to the cold and empty unfeeling desert to the bloodstained ending, everything gets its own look through Heyvaert\u2019s lens.<\/p>\n

Working with everything on screen is the music by Robin Coudert and Rob (as credited on usually trusty IMDB) who create a soundscape that adds to and underlines the films emotions.\u00a0 The choice of what music goes where as well as to which scenes to leave without music is clearly well thought out and calculated for best impact and impression.\u00a0 As much as the music works great with the scenes it is on, the lack of it is noticeable and helps create a more complete experience.<\/p>\n

Revenge is a powerful film but its brutality does not lie solely where most people would expect it.\u00a0 The emotional and mental effect on the characters and the viewer is what hits the hardest and not the obvious violence that unfolds through to the end.\u00a0 Yes, this violence is effective with hard hits and rough deaths, but what will hit the hardest for some viewers will be the unseen, the reactions, how some of the characters handle the rape more than its consequences.\u00a0 That being said the consequences are fun to watch in a strong revenge kind of way.\u00a0 In a horror sub-genre where male filmmakers usually dominate, Coralie Fargeat brings a more female approach to the source, to the rape itself, connecting it more to the emotionality of the act than its physicality.\u00a0 This gives her film more impact on the whole than a regular physical violence over mental and emotional violence that most films in the sub-genre usually go for.\u00a0 Here these things are not avoided, they are taken head on while also being left to the viewer to make up their own minds on the situation and the power of the revenge itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a trip with her married boyfriend, Jen gets raped by one of his friends and left for dead by the group.\u00a0 As she awakens, she decides to get revenge and goes after those who wronged her in a brutal manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[58,367,820,840,1087],"class_list":["post-27735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-packed-april","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-foreign","tag-rape","tag-revenge","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27737,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27735\/revisions\/27737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}