"It works because Spielmann has established that we're not watching belabored dramatic trajectories collide, but an encounter between two people in miles-away mindsets."

| Jul 1, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Gotz Speilmann's film is well-made, aptly characterised and seems frighteningly true to life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 6, 2010

It has a distinctive sort of Euro-hardcore sheen, mainly due to the superbly lucid, diamond-hard cinematography from Martin Gschlacht.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 30, 2010

Aided by a terrific performance from Krisch and an exceptional ensemble cast, Revanche is a beautifully crafted psychological thriller that should firmly place Götz Spielmann on the world cinema map.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 30, 2010

The film exerts a steady grip without charging head-first into thriller territory: there's a cool, cosmic irony to the way fate wheels around.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 29, 2010

As good a thriller as you'll see this year.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2010

Tauntingly slow but hauntingly shot (and edited with crisp abruptness), it was a deserving nominee for Best Foreign Film at last year's Oscars.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2010

A surprisingly unruffled tale of love, thievery, murder and revenge.

| Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Jan 22, 2010

The plot might have yielded a generic erotic thriller if Revanche were made by rougher hands. Instead it becomes something more sophisticated thanks to the efforts of writer-director Götz Spielmann and a superb cast.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 22, 2010

An unbearably taut, slow-simmering noir transposed to the vast countryside and its patient, drawn-out rhythms.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 14, 2009

There's real biblical tragedy, and redemption, in Spielmann's fine, sad, suspenseful film.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 5, 2009

Spielmann's deft storytelling is coupled with immaculate compositions that constrain the characters as confidently as any prison bars.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2009

A film of carefully strained pulp and rigorously controlled intrigue, the Austrian revenge drama Revanche, which is really about the dividing line between vengeance and forgiveness, belongs to a neo-noir universe where all the classical genre laws apply.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 14, 2009

So few characters in Hollywood thrillers ever feel real. The true achievement of Revanche may be that Spielmann's characters sometimes feel too much so.

| Aug 7, 2009

Writer-director Gotz Spielmann (Antares) avoids the clutter and manipulation of most thrillers, escalating tension almost solely through the characters' turbulent emotions.

| Aug 7, 2009

Revanche involves a rare coming together of a male's criminal nature and a female's deep needs, entwined with a first-rate thriller.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 6, 2009

The title Revanche means 'retribution,' and this Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film is a European extract of neo-noir, like a Bavarian Body Heat or a Teutonic 21 Grams.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 30, 2009

The performers do terrifically understated work. Even in a scene of angry, anguished coupling, silence and stillness persist.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 26, 2009