Austria’s 2009 Academy Award submission for best foreign language film, Revanche, is deceptively unambitious for a film that nabbed one of the five nomination slots as well as a handful of other awards. 
Director Götz Spielmann has crafted a dramatic and alternatively romantic thriller that owes some debt to, but is notably warmer than, the films of fellow countryman Michael Haneke. The film opens today in New York, Boston, and Seattle, but thanks to an inspired move by Janus Films (who are usually not in the first-run film business), the film was made available for an advanced press screening online through Janus/Criterion’s partnership with The Auteurs, a forerunner in high-quality streaming cinema.
Johannes Krisch is excellent as Alex, an ex-con working for a sleazy mob-type brothel owner in Vienna while secretly involved with a beautiful Ukrainian girl on the payroll. Their situation becomes quickly untenable and Alex’s plan for a new life includes robbing the bank in the rural village where his aging, widower, farmer grandfather lives. Things go wrong, of course, terribly wrong, but Spielmann orchestrates the dramatic motion in the most spare way, stripped of any attempt to achieve the Drama with a capital D as so many filmmakers would have tried. The opening scene of the film, which obtains meaning toward the end, is a sustained shot of the reflection of pines on a placid lake, the lack of visual movement standing in stark contrast to the rich layers of woodland sounds which heighten the experience. Eventually the tranquility is interrupted, and Spielmann has both set the tone and displayed his ideal aesthetic. If ever a thriller had the power to calm and center its viewer, this film is likely the closest anyone could possible get.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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1 pletchernrb // Oct 10, 2011 at 11:46 am
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