JUNE 2 ― As a matter of personal taste, the underdog wins every time. So in terms of cinema, a great trashy film is often something I find myself loving more than a great classy film, which means that one of the biggest pleasures in my endless trawl for good films is when I come across an expertly or imaginatively made film that belongs in a genre that most people would put in the trash.
To me, there’s nothing more thrilling than stumbling upon a great piece of trash. It’s even better if it’s an unashamed piece of trash instead of one with pretentions of grandeur.
When it comes to genre films, the term “elevated genre” has been making the rounds the last few years to describe films like Blue Ruin, It Follows, Get Out, Raw and Disorder; films that clearly belong in disreputable genres like horror and thriller, but are elevated from their lowly genres courtesy of the more thoughtful and slightly less formulaic nature of their stories and the film-makers’ excellent directing chops.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do love me some elevated genre, as can be seen in my including most of the aforementioned films in my favourite films of the year lists the last few years.
But there’s something that makes me go all tingly inside when an unashamed, no holds barred, pulpy piece of disreputable provocation is made so well, yet without giving any concessions to good taste, that it just dares you to accept it for what it is ― a simply great piece of trash.
And when it comes to disreputable and controversial genres, few are more disreputable than the rape-revenge film, with the most notorious examples being I Spit On Your Grave and The Last House On The Left.
The plots are almost always the same ― a usually female character is raped and normally also tortured, abused and left for dead, the character survives and then exacts revenge on their rapists (or if they don’t, their family will take up the mantle and exact their revenge for them).
To this day film-makers have never stopped trying to make new additions to the genre, even if unfortunately most have turned out to be garbage.
So I can’t really say that I had high hopes when I came across another new entry into the genre in the form of a film simply called Revenge.
The main reason I opted to give it a try is because it’s distributed by Neon, a relatively new company founded by Tim League (from Drafthouse Films) and Tom Quinn (from Magnolia and RADiUS-TWC), which has released films like Colossal, The Bad Batch and Ingrid Goes West, and alongside A24, IFC and Blumhouse, are some of the more trustworthy distributors of indie and genre films out there right now.
Looks like they’ve hit the jackpot again with Revenge, a feature directing debut from female film-maker Coralie Fargeat, which is a French production shot in gorgeous North African locations but set somewhere in America.
It’s a classic rape-revenge story, which means that it follows the same plot trajectory as I Spit On Your Grave, only this time it’s about Jen (a smoking hot Matilda Lux), a mistress to a married rich dude named Richard, and an unfortunate rape incident which happened when Richard’s two friends arrived early at his luxury holiday cabin in the middle of the desert for their annual hunting trip.
The film spends its first act teasing its audience as it presents Jen almost exclusively from the eyes of the leering men, who of course see her as nothing more than a sexy piece of meat as she flirts with Richard in front of the guys, and when Richard is away for a few hours the next morning, one of the friends rapes her.
Fargeat cleverly leaves details such as what Jen is doing with a married dude in the first place, or why is she dancing sexily like that in front of the guys, totally open to interpretation, provoking the audience to enter into the never ending debate of whether “women asking for it” is ever a valid reason for rape.
When Richard finds out, of course it’ll be a case of “bros before hoes”, and Jen is left for dead. What happens next is a beautiful blend of I Spit On Your Grave’s cathartic emotional release as we see the rapists get their comeuppance, and the superhuman survival skills of John Rambo in First Blood.
Fargeat doesn’t skimp at all on the violence and gore, as we see every stab, slice, shot and wound in painful, bloody detail, making this just as ultra-violent as Brawl In Cell Block 99 (probably even more so), but with none of the black humour that punctuate some of the scenes in that film.
This is just pure, hot, rage, delivered by one hot woman in the hot surroundings of a desert. A relentless and unashamedly pulpy pleasure, some may say that revenge is best served cold, but in the case of Revenge, it’s definitely best served hot and bloody. One of the best films of the year.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
