Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Starring: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Jesse LaVercombe, Anna Maguire, Obi Abili
If a thriller opens with a bird's eye shot of its protagonists driving
down a tree-lined road, you know they're in for trouble. If their
destination is a secluded cabin by a lake? Uh-oh! Violation, the feature debut of directing duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and
Dusty Mancinelli, opens with its protagonist, Miriam
(Sims-Fewer), driving down a tree-lined road to the secluded lakeside
cabin of her estranged younger sister Greta (Anna Maguire) and
brother-in-law Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe), and boy does the movie
cash in on those early warning signs.
Miriam is accompanied by her husband Caleb (Obi Abili), but it
seems their marriage is all but over. Miriam spends most of her time
with her sister, reminiscing about their childhood in London. One night,
Miriam finds herself lying by a fire with Dylan, and in a drunken moment
attempts to kiss him. Though she immediately expresses regret, Miriam's
alcohol fuelled lapse leads to an incident that will affect herself and
Dylan in brutal ways.
Violation does for the rape-revenge genre what Haneke's
Funny Games did for home invasion thrillers. Sims-Fewer
and Mancinelli want us to consider the reality of revenge, the messiness
of violence, and how an act of vengeance can scar its perpetrator as
much as the crime they're seeking revenge for. Their camera doesn't
flinch as we watch Miriam take revenge. Though she's planned it with all
the meticulous precision of a Columbo villain, she hasn't
considered just how difficult it is to kill someone. Like the infamously
protracted killing in Hitchcock's
Torn Curtain, Miriam's victim is forced to suffer a brutal, prolonged demise.
Having studied Dylan's rabbit-trapping skills, Miriam employs the same
methods to dispose of the human corpse as you might use to prepare a
rabbit for a stew. It's gruesome stuff, all the more harrowing for how
much thought Miriam has put into this plan.
Much like Funny Games, I fundamentally disagree with the thesis at play here.
Violation's deconstruction of the rape-revenge movie suggests it believes we
can't separate fantasy from reality. Where Coralie Fargeat's
Revenge
was a woman filmmaker telling us that it's okay, perhaps even necessary,
to enjoy rape-revenge movies, Violation tells us we're
sickos for indulging such a vigilante instinct. But when we cheer on a
woman for taking violent revenge against her male aggressors, we're not
literally saying we believe that every victim of abuse should take such
actions. I believe in due process and the rule of law, but that doesn't
make for a very appealing grindhouse thriller. In the real world I want
to see women find justice through the courts, but onscreen I'd much
rather see their violent fantasies indulged. This is partly why fiction
exists, so that we can continue to sate our primal instincts in a
civilised age.
While I may disagree with Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli's thesis, I applaud
their presentation of it and their willingness to add to the debate. If
they set out to make us consider the gruesome reality of revenge and how
the real world doesn't reductively consist of goodies and baddies, then
they certainly made their point. They're very clever in their subversion
of the stock imagery of rape-revenge movies, presenting us with a male
victim who is as naked and vulnerable as all the women we've seen in
this sub-genre, and Sims-Fewer and LaVercombe's performances similarly
blur the traditional gender roles we're accustomed to. Yep,
Violation sure gets it point across. I'm just not sure
it's a point that needs to be made to anyone adult enough to be able to
separate reality from fantasy.
