In the words of Michael David Cummings, everybody needs a little vengeance, especially rape victims, and then especially rape victims left for dead in the desert by their married boyfriend and their boyfriends’ friends (one of whom is the rapist). That’s the set-up for Coralie Fargeat’s excellent debut, Revenge, a French genre exercise that’s as gory and vicious as we’ve come to expect French genre exercises to be since, oh, let’s say about the time High Tension was all the rage. Tree trunks impale bodies. Glass shards shred feet. Peyote renders the protagonist invulnerable to pain as she cauterizes her own wounds. Drowned corpses bloat beyond recognition. The only thing Fargeat doesn’t do is mutilate male genitalia, which I’m grateful for, because c’mon.
Anyway: Revenge is great. You should be able to get it on VOD as of tomorrow. In the meantime you can revel in my terrific review for Paste Magazine.
A Constant Visual Feast 