Revenge (Kjersti Steinsbø, 2015): Norway|Canada

Reviewed by Veronica Arvidsson. At Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2017.

This is the director debut for Kjersti Steinsbø with the Norwegian film Revenge. It’s a strong ensemble of well known Norwegian actors Anders Baasmo Christiansen and Trond Espein Seim being two of them, but the protagonist is played by Siren Jørgensen mostly known in Norway for her work in theatre.

Revenge is set on an isolated tourist location next to a fjord in western Norway. The idyllic couple Morten and Nina runs a much appreciated hotel on this beautiful location. Rebekka approach the couple as a journalist from a traveling magazine wanting to do a longer story on the couples tourism business. In reality Rebekka is not a journalist and have come to seek revenge for an incident that occurred 20 years earlier. To find out which best way to punish her target she stays with the couple a longer period of time which results in new relationships with the locals and suddenly Rebekka finds herself in a bigger mess full of secrets boiling in the atmosphere than what she had intended to get herself into in the first place. It’s a thrilling story similar to the themes of ”The girl with the dragon tattoo” that also deals with revenge and female inferiority in society and establishes a strong statement against rape culture and sexism.

The cinematography is beautiful with extraordinary extreme full shots of the landscape. and the low key lighting on this otherwise fairytale looking location gives a gloomy, thriller enhanced feeling suitable for the theme of the film. The score has powerful effect and is well motivated for the story of revenge.

the lack of variation of locations sure does make us feel as an audience that this is a small location in a small village where everyone knows everyone, but to always cut to a scene in the fjord where the two female characters are kayaking every time these characters are having an emotional encounter just seems effortless in the scriptwriting and boring. Similar dilemmas can be applied on locations like the bar or the patio outside the house where we spend too much time experiencing the same events and feelings with the same characters that we experienced the last time we where on that location, it falls flat. It’s a beautiful visual film to look at but has cracks in the narrative structure.