Touches You

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Alex is an ex-con muscle in a brothel. He's in love with Ukrainian prostitute Tamara. She still owes money while he needs money to buy into a bar in Ibiza. They go to rob a bank and make a getaway. Police officer Robert finds Tamara waiting in the getaway car. Alex returns after the bank job and Robert shots at the fleeing couple. Tamara is killed, Robert is guilt-ridden and Alex hides out at his grandfather Hausner's farm. Alex discovers Robert is living nearby and has an affair with his wife Susanne.I really love the direction of the first part of the movie. When Tamara gets killed, the movie loses a bit of steam for me. I don't find Robert's guilt that compelling and therefore his marriage not that compelling either. It also doesn't help that they aren't in the movie until much later. Robert's police relationship seems wrong. I think they're investigating him for manslaughter and anybody in his position would be treated by a psychiatrist. Although I understand the attempt for a Greek tragedy, I don't really buy it. The first half is terrific and the second half has a few problems.

A love in the underworld between Russian prostitute Tamara (Irina Potapenko) and bordello body-guard Alex (Johannes Krisch) leads them to embrace the perspective of escape from the harsh realities of debts owed to crime bosses. The solution to their worries is a bank heist, during which Tamara dies after being fatally wounded by a stray bullet from police officer Robert (Andreas Lust). Engrieved Alex hides out at his grandfather's (Johannes Thanheiser) farm, where he spends his days chopping wood for the winter. However grief turns to concepts of vengeance, when it turns out that Robert and his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss) are neighbours.Starting off from a seedy, hopeless love affair, after a few scenes certainty of an emotional train-ride becomes evident. As the story unfolds and takes various turns, moral dilemmas take the forefront, as death, sorrow, remorse and regret construe a fascinating psychological story, where revenge isn't limited to a simple pulling of the trigger lacking forethought. As Alex, Robert and Susanne interact questions raised reach satisfying, if uneasy, conclusions, as a full circle is reached, making this one of the most poignant movies on the question of revenge, much detached from the typical Hollywood or Hong Kong take on the matter.The story has a unmistakable natural flow (partly owed to the settings and the camera-work), as happenings build the story without effort or forced connections. As if to underline this music score is done away with, only the noise of the streets and background of nature fill the space between infrequent dialogues. All this allows Götz Spielmann to deliver a focused, straight story without visual distractions or voyages into the supposed 'darkness' of the human heart.

Wanna see exactly that kind of movie, that would lead to suicide of a totally broken Hollywood producer? So take this flop called Revanche! Wanna see lousy stereotype acting of boring no names, cause you like college-style staging? So take Revanche! Wanna see no plot at all or that one you've seen 100 times before (but then much better)? So take Revanche! Wanna see what it means, when a movie's bill is sent to the tax payer, just as it was in good old soviet union? So take Revanche! But don't say you weren't warned: at the eve I trapped into this small town bullsh*t, no less than a fifth of the audience left early. Damn, they were right!

Celebrated Austrian writer and director Götz Spielmann's 2008 revenge thriller Revanche premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival to critical acclaim. It won and was nominated for numerous international film awards, including a nomination for the 2009 Acadamy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.With Revanche, Speilmann has crafted a stylish, tasteful film with an awful lot in its favour. Unfortunately, too often it doesn't quite hang together as it should, the plot strays into the realms of far-fetched and contrived, and it feels that too often Speilmann is reliant on old standard clichés rather than striving to plough new furrows. Definitely a director to watch, but sadly Revanche's faults stop it from being the brilliant thriller it could - and should - have been. LB