By Erik Morse
Revanche was a 2009 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee.
In the brief overture to Revanche, Austrian director Götz Spielmann includes an orchestra of chirping crickets and the mellifluous hum of a lawnmower laboring through viridescent patches of Viennese countryside. A plump housewife Susanne (Ursula Strauss), possibly with child, stares silently at this painterly expanse of beauty from the comfort of her modern kitchen. Somewhere nearby a limpid brook babbles quietly, its stunning combination of color and repose rivaling those placid marshes of Giverny. A large rock suddenly falls through the glassy surface of the pond, shattering the bucolic idyll and sending a discordant wave of water toward its banks. Something or someone has disturbed the harmony of this peaceful retreat and the resulting ripple might well threaten everyone in its path.