Revenge
2017 Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Halloween Marathon 2024 Day 29 Film 57
How do you twist genre norms that tends towards the lurid treatment of women? From casual nudity in 80s slashers and especially the exploitative "I Spit On Your Grave," there are treacherous moments of women being tortured while also being sexualized. Even the more recent Promising Young Woman doesn't really give a lot of room for catharsis to bad actions when the audience isn't given their pound of flesh for the revenge part of the sexual assault story. It's part off why I stayed away from this- as so often these revenge type films are hollow. But Coralie Fargeat doesn't hold back on a gory catharsis.
It starts with a delightful daylight shot of the Australian Outback with a helicopter coming in showing the isolation of the space. A hunter and his girlfriend come to his oasis of sin. She's blonde and perfectly bubbly- demanding attention from him. His wife doesn't know of course. When his hunting buddies come early too they're greeted with dazed look at her like they're looking at another fresh prey. Here we have the series of contradictions- as the film plays with showing off her legs and body (and hints at The Substance's pull for celebrity), but also confronting the audience with how these disgusting creeps look at her too.
When the creeper eventually assaults her the other hunter doesn't really do anything. It's almost expected or shrugged off. Big candy bars are chewed grotesquely like in Fargeat's The Substance. Here it's again utilized as showing man's grotesquery. Rotting things are laid out- bugs climb over the world and are pissed on because these men are vile. Instead of a prolonged torture scene however the camera pans away. Her boyfriend doesn't really care either- just lambasting his buddy and trying to buy her off before figuring it's better to just push her off a cliff. That moment comes as both shocking in its pacing, but not at all unexpected. These are greasy assholes- the bastard kind of man and they're played with all the schlub-ness of what they really are- lazy hunters with guns that display their fragile machismo of trophy hunting.
This all becomes part of a superhero like transformation- almost tongue-in-cheek cheesiness with a flair and montage of weaponry. She experiences the desert- the nature around her and it seems to give her the life force to push back. She stands awakened by a purpose (and eventually wears away pretty blonde persona) to enact her revenge as she mauls the men in a glorious blaze of revenge. It's the kind of revenge that Tarantino decided to hold back on for Kill Bill. Although I liked KB:Part 2 there is something missing in the calculated effort- the grindhouse guttaral response of definitive rage.
The last half of this film leans into that rage- the men become prey so they are reduced to bodies ready to be torn in body horrific ways. They're the ones that have to run nude. Although some of this becomes a cartoonish repetitive cat and mouse game, it's effective by embracing the gratuitous glaze of grizzled blood spouting out of sleazy men. The bugs consume the rest. We see her heroic stature. There's this feeling that the camera may linger over her body, but if you're undermining her power she'll pluck your eye out.