Revanche

Nominated for Best Foreign Film at last year's Oscars, there’s a very noirish feel about Revanche which presents typical characters from the genre - the ex-con with big ambitions, the Ukrainian prostitute, the local cop, his restless wife - whose lives are entangled in unforeseen ways. Although we start off in the grim streets and sleazy milieu of Vienna’s red-light district, most of the action is set amid the woods and lakes of Austria’s quiet countryside. When things take a bad turn, the film time and again overturns expectations: scenarios are unguessable, deliberate pacing lets us look deeper into the characters’ lives than most crime movies would trouble to do. Revenge is indeed uppermost, but this is that rare beast, a thoughtful thriller.