Revanche had its North American premiere here at Telluride 2008 and was far and away one of the most exciting new films playing. It’s a revenge thriller with cinema purist sensibilities from acclaimed Austrian director, Götz Spielmann. Keeping its German title, Revanche, the word carries two meanings: Revenge, but also a kind of second chance.

In the Austrian countryside, Robert and Susanne (Andreas Lust and Ursula Strauss) have built a cozy house and are trying to start a family. He’s as a rural cop, she works at the local grocery and on Sundays she takes her elderly, widowed neighbor to church. In the red light district of Vienna, Alex (Johannes Krisch) is the errand boy for a pimp and has started an amorous–and very secret–relationship with one of his prostitutes, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). When the desperation of escaping Vienna kicks in for Alex and Tamara, it looks as if Revanche is heading into familiar genre territory: Alex plans a bank job out in the country (”What can go wrong?”), it goes wrong and Tamara is killed in the getaway by a cop, Robert. But it’s when Alex goes to hide out on his grandfather’s farm and realizes the cop who killed his girlfriend lives next door, the movie screeches like a getaway car into unexpected territory. …Read more