Diane Kruger won a very deserved Best Actress award at Cannes this year for her role as a woman fighting for justice after losing her family to a terrorist attack. Director, Fatih Akin, tells a somewhat uneven, but ultimately satisfying story of a grieving wife and mother.

The film opens in a prison block. The inmates are out of their cells and cheering. Nuri (Numan Acar) emerges from a cell, dressed in a white tuxedo and is removed from the celebratory crowd and taken to a large room set up for his wedding. Katja (Kreuger) and Nuri get married and we fast forward 6 years. They now have a kid, and Nuri is thriving post rehabilitation. No longer a drug dealer, he helps convicts find their footing when returning to society. One day Katja leaves their son with Nuri at his office to run errands. When she returns, the block is closed off with police tape. She makes her way past a police officer and only gets close enough to see the office has blown up before she is dragged to the pavement and handcuffed.

Akin tells his film in three parts. The first part depicts the immediate aftermath of the attack. Katja is passed through the system and treated unfairly, because of her husband’s past. She descends into a depression; taking whatever drug she can find. It all becomes too much for her, but there is a breakthrough in the case just as she makes the decision to end her life. The second and third parts follow Katja’s crusade for justice against a stone cold pair of Neo-Nazis and I was pleasantly surprised at where the film goes from there.

That isn’t to say that In The Fade is all that surprising, or even original. It really isn’t. Revenge films are a dime a dozen. I must have seen three or four in the first half of the festival. In the Fade is a good example of the revenge film. Akin manages to play directly into the conventions of the genre, but still maintains tension despite the inevitability of the plot. Diane Kreuger’s performance is key here and the main reason the film is elevated above a simple genre flick. Katja’s nihilistic descent in the films first half is absolutely believable solely because Kreuger’s performance is so grounded and honest.

I’m enamored with the closing credits of this film. After an incendiary ending that leaves no stone unturned, the camera spins up into the sky and lands on the water, zooming in slowly, we see the sunlight dance in wisps on the ocean floor. I was mesmerized and watched every second. Stunned and satisfied. A perfect way to close.