Wonderful character development!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Both Alex and Tamara work in a Vienna brothel, while they carry on a secret relationship. To improve their life and pay off Tamara's debts, Alex decides to rob a bank and things get out of control when a policeman shows up on his getaway. It's a drama movie that creates tensions and the revenge story was told in a different suspenseful way. More than a revenge story, it actually deals with humans emotional behavior and how they approach to a serious situation. The story is unpredictable and most of the things that happened in it looks real to me. Overall, I like this movie and To be frank, it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Being artistic doesn't always mean you have made the decent flick. Sometimes, the artistic can be so arrogant that it suffocates decent story. This is just the case with Austrian "Revanche", an incredibly dull and slow movie coming from nowhere and leading nowhere.Nothing is right here. The naive and empty script, empty long cuts and pretentious acting tend to irritate rather than to suck the viewer inside the revenge story in rural Austria."Revanche" is one over prized and vanity-filled flick. Nomination for Best foreign language film shouldn't have even been taken into consideration let alone be read in Kodak theater.

By the end of the opening scene of Revanche something falls (maybe it was thrown) in the quite water of a lake. Then we can see the idyllic landscape of a lawn with warm colors like from a Renoir painting being molded. We can guess that all this quietness is apparent, and that it will be troubled soon by violent events. This is what eventually happens, but it happens at its own pace and is told in a clear and distinct voice in this film by Austrian director Gotz Spielmann. An unexpected suspense drama coming from a school of cinema that proves that Michael Haneke is not the only remarkable Austrian director. There is actually something from the Haneke style in this film, with a story where chance may lead to tragedy and with the world of dark secrets hidden under the appearances of quite and banal lives.Two distinct worlds are presented in Revanche. One is the world of the brothels in Vienna where most of the working girls come from Eastern Europe, a world of sin and violence. The best characters who can populate this world are a couple of lovers (he's some kind of bodyguard and driver, she is a hooker) who try the coup which would arrange their lives - more like in an American movie with roles like Nicolas Cage used once to play. This world is the back door of the other world, the 'normal' Austrian society, with pastoral country-side, devoted policemen who jog and have wives who go to church. When the two worlds meet the collision can be tragic, even if tragedy is caused only by human mistake. The ensuing drama one of these eternal stories of love, death and revenge, but a revenge which is obtained in a very unexpected manner. Eventually the balance is re-established but at a huge price.There are a lot of surprising turns in this film and I will avoid telling anything about the story in order to leave the pleasure of following it to those who are interested. I will just recommend it for the quality of acting, of cinematography and story telling. It also fits several categories of viewers - people who like dramas and thrillers as well. The film got a nomination for the Academy Awards for the Foreign Language Film, but did not win. Its place among the nominees seems to have been however well deserved.

...and I should've done it sooner.Husband and I love films, love foreign films, even love slow-build films. But we tried our hardest and finally gave up after an hour. This was cinema torture. We finished watching on fast-forward, just to see if we were missing anything. (And the answer is, not really. Not one scene was compelling enough to make us stop skipping and watch properly again, all the way through to the end.) Quite simply, nothing happens in this movie. There are several minute stretches of (e.g.) nothing but a car in the distance and multiple scenes of chopping wood and accordion playing. The whole movie is one big series of redundant scenes, with each aspect of the characters' situations seemingly repeated over and over. I felt no underlying tension or menace at all, and when the big "revenche" comes it's like...did it happen yet? Was that it? Really?...oh. [*shrug*] Perhaps it is not that the revenche tactic didn't grab me. Could it be that I never really felt any injustice done in the first place? I mean, they had crappy lives and that is sad in a realistic way. But nothing indicates that their situations are not the result of bad life decisions. So, type of revenge aside, I have no thirst for it along with the character. Those being revenged don't feel like they deserve it. Perhaps that's not the point of the story - a "just" revenge - but there was no other emotional engagement either that compelled me to care about what happened.I really have a hard time seeing why this movie has such a high rating. And if you're wondering whether I - or the high-raters - match your taste, consider this one fact: The plot point for which the entire movie is named doesn't even *BEGIN to unfold* until somewhere between 50-60 minutes in! First 35min at least, can be skipped entirely.