Opening Friday May 11th at the IFC Center is Revenge, a deliciously nasty, bloody slice of female retaliation film. They say revenge is a dish served cold. Well that doesn’t apply to pretty, hot sexpot Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), who arrives by helicopter with her married boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens) to his remote desert hunting lodge. Everything is fun, and sexy, and freewheeling. That is until Richard’s hunting buddies Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede) show up at the door. After that, things go very, very wrong. And a battered and abused Jen is eventually pushed off a cliff and left for dead. But she most definitely is not deceased. With some ingenuity that includes a lighter, a cut-open beer can, and some peyote, Jen returns with vengeance in her heart and even a tattoo. Director Coralie Fargeat uses the almost moon-like terrain to her advantage, and visually the movie is just sensational. But she also turns the tables on the usual sexist and exploitive tropes of the genre. It’s refreshing to see a completely nude man stalking through a house with a loaded rifle. I think it’s time to use the hashtag #yourtimesup.
This movie rests at the end of a long line of violent female payback films. The kind of movies and made men shift nervously in their theater seats, while filling their dates with a sense of exhilarating power and wicked satisfaction. Sure, if you’re talking celluloid female revenge there’s always I Spit On Your Grave (1978), Carrie (1976), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Kill Bill (2003). But here’s my list of favorites you might not be as familiar with.
Lady Snowblood (1973) Definitely an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, this stylish, Japanese revenge film by Toshiya Fujita is about Yuki (the beautiful Meiko Kaji), a trained assassin, who slices and dices her way, by sword, those responsible for her father and brother’s death and her mother’s rape.
Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) In this highly-influential Swedish shocker Christina Lindberg plays a young woman who is kidnapped, forced into prostitution by a pimp who also addicts her to heroin and stabs out one of her eyes. Wearing a patch over her eye and carrying a sawed-off shotgun she goes looking for blood retribution.
The Ladies Club (1986) In this gritty 1986, directed by Janet Greek, a female cop is attacked in her own home but her rapists get off because of a legal technicality. She bonds with a support group and teams up with a vigilante female crew who kidnap rapists and surgically castrate them.
Coffy (1973) Pam Grier became an action icon playing a woman who goes undercover as a prostitute to avenge her sister and bring down drug dealers, pimps, mobsters and corrupt politicians. She even hides razor blades in her hair. The ads screamed, “Coffy- she’ll cream you!”
Audition (1999) A demented gem by Takashi Miike about a middle-aged widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who advertises for actresses for a nonexistent movie in order to find a perspective date. He meets the shy beautiful Asami (Eihi Shiina) he is immediately smitten. But what’s with that twitching tied-up burlap sack in her apartment? The last twenty minutes are hair-raising.
Hard Candy (2005) In this fiendish, scalpel-sharp, thriller by David Slade, 14-year-old Haley (Ellen Page), sets up a meet with Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a photographer, after some lengthy internet interplay, then turns the tables on him and reveals her deadly agenda.
The Brave One (2007) Jodie Foster plays a N.Y. radio host who goes all Charles Bronson-vigilante when she is attacked in Central Park and her fiancé is killed in a film directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game).
Bound To Vengeance (2015) Harrowing revenge thriller by Jose Manuel Cravioto about Eve (Tina Ivlev) who escapes being chained in a basement by a monstrous predator (Richard Tyson) and heads out to find the other woman this creep has imprisoned.
Final Girl (2015) A sardonically smart, stylized suspense film by Tyler Shields about a girl (Abigail Breslin) trained to be a vengeful warrior who goes after a group of well-heeled men who hunt down women in the woods for sport.
Mohawk (2018) A great Native American twist on the revenge film. This beautifully filmed, politically potent, fierce film by Ted Geoghegan is set in 1842 about Oak (Kaniehtiio Horn), the daughter of a Mohawk tribal chief who initiates her own private war against a group of brutal soldiers.