Typing Vengeance Is Mine as a movie title produces a few results including the Shōhei Imamura movie from 1979 and a direct to video Steven Seagal action flick from 2010. For Michael Roemer’s film, Vengeance Is Mine (1984), which he wrote and directed, the title might give the wrong impression. It is not a revenge film, or an action thriller. It is a drama, a movie broadcast originally for television on PBS. The original title was Haunted. Which makes sense as there’s a shot in this movie – of a face staring into a house distorted by rain on the window pane – that I found exceptionally haunting. The title relates more to the catholic upbringing of its protagonist, who rejected its strict enforcing as a teenager.
Brooke Adams plays Jo, who arrives in her home town of Rhode Island, somewhere she escaped when she was very young. Visiting her dying mother, a strict Catholic who adopted her, Jo spends time with her younger half-sister (also adopted) who is raising a newborn. Uneasy about being back and also undergoing a divorce from an abusive husband, Jo navigates a traumatising time. When her sister’s neighbour, Trish (Trish Van Devere) helps her out of a situation, Jo begins to hang out with these strangers including Trish’s young daughter, Jackie (Ari Meyers). Jo’s silent presence is accepted by the new family unit, as if to recognise the hurt she’s undergoing and the help she needs. We observe our protagonist adopt the role of a passive witness, as Trish is also going through a divorce and her friendly support to Jo begins to fracture as Trish’s own serious mental health issues become clearer. Jo’s past – the relationship to her own childhood and her mother – is externalised here in the drama of other people’s lives, which recall and reflect Jo’s own traumas, until she cannot be passive any longer.
Writing this out makes it feel very convoluted, but experiencing it, the events flow easily, even as your understanding of a moment shifts. A layered narrative that unfolds through Roemer’s naturalistic approach, until by the final third I was vibrating with tension from Van Devere’s performance as Trish, increasingly severe in her relationship to her daughter and everyone around her. Talking at length, Trish treats Jo as a silent scene partner, and continually disrupts the flow, apologising or acknowledging for a moment as soon as it’s happened. Brooke Adams is very strong, even in her quiet moments watching events play out, we see how everything clearly affects her, the past playing across her face. The way the movie works feels somewhat comparable to an Ingmar Bergman psychological drama but ensconced in coastal and autumnal Americana. Meltdowns by the bayside. Windows and doorways, the divide between inside and outside houses, the internal state and the externalised expression. Faces staring in, or staring out. A peculiar rhythm that keeps the viewer off-guard, culminating with considerable impact. Feels old-world drama, heavy themes underlying naturalism and observation. A complicated character study with novelistic depth. Hard to convey the unusual tone and how arresting it all becomes.
Watched a copy from the Rarefilmm website, though I think it’s no longer there. Bluray release by The Film Desk. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 