Revenge is a 2017 French action thriller film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, and starring Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe and Guillaume Bouchède. The plot follows a young woman who is assaulted and left for dead in the desert by three men, where she recovers and seeks vengeance upon her attackers.
Revenge | |
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Directed by | Coralie Fargeat |
Written by | Coralie Fargeat |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Robrecht Heyvaert |
Edited by |
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Music by | Rob |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Rézo Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 108 minutes[1] |
Country | France[2] |
Languages |
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Box office | $2,692,079[3] |
Revenge had its world premiere on 11 September 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival, as part of the Midnight Madness section. The film was released theatrically in France on 7 February 2018 by Rezo Films, and received critical acclaim, with praise for the screenplay, direction, cinematography, and Lutz's performance.
Jennifer (dubbed "Jen"), an American socialite, is in a secret relationship with a married Richard. The two fly out to Richard's secluded home in the middle of the desert for a weekend tryst before his annual hunting trip with friends Stan and Dimitri. Stan and Dimitri arrive a day early, disappointing Richard, who was hoping to keep Jen a secret. That night the three men and Jen have a fun night of drinking and dancing.
The next morning, while Richard is away, Stan tries to initiate sex with Jen, claiming she had come on to him the night before. When she refuses, he rapes her. Dimitri sees the rape but ignores it. Richard returns, berates Stan, and offers Jen money to forget about the incident. Jen demands to be sent home and threatens to reveal their relationship to Richard's wife. Richard slaps Jen and she runs off into the desert, pursued by the three men give chase. Cornering Jen at a cliff, Richard pushes her off, and she is impaled on a tree. The trio return to the house, planning to retrieve her body later.
After a while, Jen wakes up and painfully frees herself. She wanders the desert with a piece of the tree branch stuck in her torso, trying to avoid the three men, who realized she survived the fall and had split up to search. Jen catches Dimitri alone and after a brief fight, manages to stab both of his eyes with his hunting knife. He bleeds out as Jen takes his supplies. She hides in a cave and treats her injuries. After a series of nightmares of the men hunting her, Jen sets out to find them first.
After Richard and Stan discover and dispose of Dimitri's body, Richard orders Stan to track Jen down in his SUV. Jen spots Stan first and ambushes him when he runs out of gas. A gunfight ensues, ending with Jen killing him with Dimitri's shotgun and takes the car.
Richard returns to the house, calls the helicopter, and takes a shower, but hears a noise and searches the property for Jen. She finds him once he has given up and shoots him in the stomach. The two chase each other around the house with shotguns, and Richard knocks Jen out with his shotgun. He tries to strangle her, but she shoves her hand in his stomach wound, forcing him to drop her. Jen recovers her shotgun and shoots Richard in the chest, killing him. A bloodied but triumphant Jen walks out of the house and turns around as she hears the helicopter approach.
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Principal photography on the film began on 6 February and wrapped on 21 March 2017.[4]
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2017.[5][6][7] Prior to that, Shudder acquired distribution rights to the film.[8] It was later revealed Neon would distribute the film theatrically in the United States, before its release on Shudder.[9]
The film was released in France on 7 February 2018 by Rézo Films.[10] It was released in the United States on 11 May 2018, in a limited release and through video on demand.[11]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 135 reviews, and an average rating of 7.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Revenge slices and dices genre tropes, working within an exploitation framework while adding a timely – yet never less than viscerally thrilling – feminist spin."[12] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 23 critics.[13]
A.O. Scott of The New York Times said, "Blunt, bloody and stylish almost in spite of itself, Revenge is a synthesis of exploitation and feminism."[14] Kevin Maher of The Times provides a more negative review: "Labelled a 'feminist rape-revenge movie', it takes all the traditional tenets of that most dubious of genres and simply does them again."[15]
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