MarketRevenge (2017 film)
Company Profile

Revenge (2017 film)

Revenge is a 2017 French action-thriller horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat in her feature directorial debut, and starring Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, and Guillaume Bouchède. The plot follows a young woman who is raped and left for dead in the desert by three men, where she recovers and seeks vengeance upon them.

Plot
Jen and her married boyfriend, Richard, take a chartered helicopter to his secluded luxury vacation home in the desert. The pilot gives Richard a small bag of peyote. Jen is a young, beautiful American who wants to move to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams and believes Richard can help her. They sleep together, and afterwards, he calls his wife to check in. The next morning, Richard's friends Stan and Dimitri arrive early to take part in a hunting trip. Richard is forced to introduce Jen to them though he planned for her to leave before they arrived. That night, the four of them party. Jen asks to take the peyote but Richard declines, citing an anecdote he heard about a man who took peyote and sawed off his own leg without feeling it. Inebriated, Jen dances a sexy routine. When an exhausted Richard declines to join her, she dances seductively with Stan instead. Jen awakes to Richard being away for the morning. Stan becomes aggressive when she rebuffs his advances and eventually rapes her. Dimitri sees the rape but ignores it. Richard returns and berates Stan, but when Jen asks to go home, he insists that she move to Canada at his expense. When Jen threatens to reveal their relationship to Richard's wife, Richard slaps her, and she runs off into the desert, pursued by the three men. Richard then shoves her off a cliff, and she is impaled by a tree branch. Believing Jen to be dead, Richard assures his friends that they can finish their trip before anyone finds the body. Jen regains consciousness and, while bleeding, is able to painfully free herself but with a piece of the tree branch still stuck through her torso. When the men return, she hides. With night approaching, they split up to cover more ground. Jen catches Dimitri alone, but he grabs her face and holds her underwater. She grabs his hunting knife and stabs him in the eye. With Dimitri dead, Jen takes his shotgun and hides in a cave. She remembers she has Richard's peyote and takes it, before entering a heightened state of mind when she removes the branch and heats a beer can in the fire to cauterize the wound. The artwork on the can leaves a perfect brand/scar of a phoenix on her belly. After a series of nightmares of the men hunting her, Jen leaves the cave to deal with them. Richard and Stan find Dimitri's body in the water. Stan takes the SUV to continue the hunt, but while he is filling the gas tank, Jen ambushes him. A bloody gunfight follows, and Stan is shot and killed by Jen while trying to run her over. After failing to contact Stan on the radio, Richard speeds back home and calls a helicopter to pick him up. While showering, he hears a noise. Jen surprises him and manages to shoot him in the stomach. The two chase each other around the house with shotguns as Richard's blood covers every floor and wall. Despite his blood loss, Richard is able to catch Jen and begins strangling her, but Jen forces her hand into his exposed stomach, allowing her to retake the gun and ultimately shoot Richard dead. A bloodied but triumphant Jen walks out of the house as she hears the helicopter approach. ==Cast==
Cast
Matilda Lutz as Jen • Kevin Janssens as Richard • Vincent Colombe as Stan • Guillaume Bouchède as Dimitri • Jean-Louis Tribes as Roberto == Production ==
Production
Development Coralie Fargeat was inspired to make a revenge film in the vein of Mad Max or Rambo, "with strong characters on a phantasmagoric journey". Though Fargeat was aware of the rape and revenge film genre, she did not set out to make a film of that type and had never seen I Spit on Your Grave, one of the most well-known films of the genre. Said Fargeat: "I wanted to take this story out of the genre of horror. I didn't want Jen to be screaming and suffering for the whole movie, trying to survive. I wanted her to go somewhere else and transform into a cool and badass character." Of the film's early scenes that view Jen through a male gaze and show her dancing with men, Fargeat said this was done because she "wanted to embrace the fascinating, polarising image of the Lolita. Jen can be empty and stupid and an object of desire if she wants. It shouldn't lead to [a sexual assault]." Fargeat also chose not to linger too much on the rape scene, saying, "For me that's not what the film's about. So I didn't feel the need to make it visually important. Before she is raped, she's told it's her fault, that she created the situation. I wanted to deal with the psychological and verbal violence towards her — the rape is symbolic of the way she's considered and treated." ==Release==
Release
The film had its world premiere at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2017. Prior to that, Shudder acquired distribution rights to the film. It was later revealed Neon would distribute the film theatrically in the United States, before its release on Shudder. The film was released in France on 7 February 2018 by Rezo Films. It was released in the United States on 11 May 2018, in a limited release and through video on demand. ==Reception==
Reception
Critical response TheWrap praised Revenge for its subversion of rape and revenge tropes and embraced the film as a welcome addition to the genre from a female lens. Andrew Whalen of Newsweek said the film is "the closest thing to a feminist rape-revenge tale since Abel Ferrara Ms. 45". A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote: "Blunt, bloody and stylish almost in spite of itself, Revenge is a synthesis of exploitation and feminism". Some critics compared the film to French New Extremity films like High Tension and Martyrs. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com awarded the film three and a half out of four, and wrote: "with cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert, Fargeat has created a high-contrast hellscape, a place filled with equal amounts of danger and discovery". According to TheWrap, among the tropes that Fargeat subverted were past films' tendency to focus on the violence done to the victim. Lemire commented that the process of Jen's survival "requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief", although "Fargeat definitely emphasizes the 'fantasy' element of the rape-revenge fantasy genre, not only through Jen's resourcefulness but also with the dreamlike way in which she depicts her journey toward regaining control." Wilson argued: "If rape is the pinnacle of male disregard for female life, what do we accomplish by presenting a protagonist who gleans and internalizes that violent indifference? Our protagonist is transformed, but she converts from one male fantasy to another: wide-eyed damsel to hardened action hero." Accolades ==References==
tickerdossier.comtickerdossier.substack.com