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At first glance, Revanche has a taste of déjà vu. It clearly recalls of the German and Austrian films that have appeared in the last few years, and have been noticed in many festivals. Summer 04 by Stefan Krohmer, Ping Pong by Matthias Luthardt and Windows on Monday (Montag kommen die Fenster) by Ulrich Köhler  already depicted in a subtle and yet intense way bourgeois dramas happening in the countryside, triggered by a stranger coming out of nowhere, often a low-class profile, more or less wild, always dangerous. The recipe was simple : a few underacting bodies, some rare and well written dialogues, a cold photography that favors wide shots and emptiness.

The story goes like this. Alex dates Tamara. They both work at a brothel. At some point, they have to escape. They need cash, Alex robs a bank, an accident occurs, Tamara is left Dead. Then, Alex visits his father in the countryside, right outside the city where the event occurred. It turns out the neighbors are a couple, the husband is the cop who killed Tamara. Alex starts to date his elegant wife. During the last half of the film, one can feel tension along the scenes, Alex brings it with him, refusing to say a word, confronting his own ghosts. Death is all the minds, and yet Alex makes love to the cop’s wife, giving life without even realizing it. This film is all about making paradoxical situation obvious. Death seems to call another death, but eventually this conflict turns out to give birth to life, almost accidently. Sometimes, a form of humanism can be found in paradoxical scenes that make mysteriously and still immediately sense. So immediately that it feels like a small epiphany. The key scene of the film is emblematic in this regard. Alex and the cop have a talk for the first time on a bench, in front of a lake. A few words are exchanged, nothing is said directly but at this very moment the all story resolves itself. Everything relies in how things are said, in a quiet and sincere way. Moral pain is all over, it is shared intimately at such a point that it has to go out. It has to disappear, with all the ghosts that come with it.

Epiphany has always to do to some extent with life, and from times to times, it occurs when life and death are confronted. Ingrid Bergman on the Stromboli awakes on the top of the vulcano, and it’s a new beginning, a renaissance. I like the way these German and Austrian countryside’s dramas revisits this notion, in quite a homogeneous way. In the case of Revanche, the lake has an interesting place. It is where the film starts and ends, where the gun is thrown. Funny how this nature comes back so often in those countryside’s dramas: quiet and wild, it doesn’t say a thing and at the same time it’s overwhelming, at least in one or two key scenes. There is a romantic touch to those films, something that stress the fate of chance and the beauty of life. Beyond the cold pictures and the almost unanimated bodies, something still exists and shakes, in spite of the pain, in spite of the doubts. In those films, epiphany in not about re-existing anymore, or even existing more – it is about saving what can be saved, and finding rest eventually.

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Looking for more infos on Montag kommen die Fenster, I found this video. I remembered how beautiful this film was. You should definitely watch this scene.