Written and Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colobe and Guillaume Bouchede
France
A straight forward title for a straight forward movie, the kind that has been made many times before – a woman is attacked and seeks revenge on her attackers. In this case, we start off with a woman and the very wealthy man she is having an affair with, in his secluded vacation home in the middle of the desert. Turns out the plan was to hang out with her there for a couple days, send her home, then go on a hunting trip with his buddies. But his buddies arrive a day early and plans change.
One of the buddies rapes her after he mistakenly thinks she’s coming on to him, and the other buddy looks the other way and lets it happen while the man of the house is away. When he returns, the first twist is that his solution is to do away with her, rather than defend her from his friends. The next twist is that she survives a drop off of a cliff, impalement on a tree, and brings herself back to life with the powers of peyote, just enough to hunt the men down one by one.
One thing that differentiates this film from others that have preceded it is that it is directed by a woman. Another thing is that one of the main antagonists is not a stranger to the assaulted woman, but is actually having a romantic relationship with her, which is more in line with reality.
There’s still plenty of objectification here, though. So, I dunno if this is necessarily any better than the exploitation that has preceded it, although I guess it is more slickly made and looks a lot better, with a lot more style than most of this stuff. And, while it does dwell on the lead’s body a lot, it does not dwell on the rape scene too much, which is a nice change of pace.
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