The rape and revenge movie, for better or for worse, has been a horror staple for the better part of fifty years now.
And, God, it’s hard to know if it is for better or for worse: from I Spit on Your Grave to Last House on the Left, the rape and revenge movie has been as much argued as a feminist approach to reclaiming sexual violence as it has a misogynist exploitation of women’s suffering. Your mileage on the matter may vary, but it’s impossible to deny how influential and notorious this movies have become within the genre.
Which is why, I think, Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 movie Revenge made such a splash when it came out. It’s a rape and revenge movie in the most explicit way: Jen (Matilda Lutz) is assaulted by the friend of her wealthy boyfriend, leading to her pursuing violent retribution against both her rapist and those who allowed it to happen.
And it’s a horrible film, in a lot of ways. The depiction of the assault is unflinching and discomforting, not least because of the all-too-realistic blind eye turned to it by other characters; Lutz imbues Matilda with a real humanity, making this violation all the harder to watch. I understand why a lot of people found it so difficult to sit through, I really do, and I don’t even neccessarily disagree with the readings of the film as an exploitative, sensationalist take on sexual assault in cinema.
But I do think there’s more to it than that. Revenge looks and feels, a lot of the time, like a fantasy movie: that high-contrast cinematography, the extremity of the survival Jen has to endure to make it out the other side, down to branding herself with a phoenix, that fantasy representation of rebirth, the stomach; it’s extreme, over-the-top, and has that sense of detachment from reality, which I know some reviewers found dismissive of the seriousness of the crime committed against Jen.
But, for me, this is what really makes Revenge work – because it is a fantasy movie. In a world that so often denies victims of sexual violence justice, let alone real payback for what’s been done to them, Revenge feels like an unabashedly cathartic response to that. It’s a movie that fulfils the fantasy of being able to take such unequivocal, violent, and final revenge on the perpetrators of sexual violence – without the questions of morality, or decency, or being the bigger person. It’s the fantasy of having the narrative be on your side when, for many victims in real life, it never would be, propelling you to the most extreme and fantastical form of revenge for what’s happened – and, for me, that’s what makes the film so interesting.
It’s a re-imagining of the rape and revenge film, one that I found genuinely compelling – Fargeat’s perspective as a female writer and director is a welcome change for the genre, and, for all it’s horribleness, it succeeds on the strength of the fantasy it fulfils.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via The Guardian)
No But Listen 