Rapist got away with it.

It's not a movie's job to make you feel good about things. If Le Tenia got punished in the end the movie would lose much of its value. It would end up being another revenge flick, but told in reverse.

It is supposed to make you feel disgusted, because that's what happens every day. People have horrible things done to them and the perperator is never punished. I personally met a woman who was raped by three men and they were never caught. The rape scene in this movie made me vomit because I was reminded of this woman and I imagined her in that situation.

"But that anti-rape message does lose some of its potency when we realize that the rapist isn't the one being punished in the final sequence."

How does the message lose it's potency if he isn't punished? I don't know how you could lose ANY potency for your anti-rape message with THAT rape scene. In fact, if anything, allowing the attacker to escape brings this thankfully fictional story about rape into even more stark reality INCREASING the lasting power on the viewer.

Tons of rapists get away with it sadly because most victims are too afraid or traumatized to come forward, or worse, aren't believed when they do. In reality, the numbers for both situations are staggering. Why should you, the viewer, be absolved from experiencing the infinite incomplete nature to most of these crimes when the victims can't? Don't they deserve to have their story told regardless of whatever closure the universe denies them?

There's actually a very rich and interesting conversation about sexual politics happening in this film, all of it framed around the giant scope that ranges from intimate love to dehumanizing rape. How society has wired men and women for centuries now to talk about sex, to view and respond to it. For some it's a way to connect, others an escape, or even a weapon - and even THAT can vary from slightly controlling someone with your sexuality to get your way or taking someone's dignity through sexual humiliation - all in direct ignorance of sex's main purpose...to create life.

This film wasn't meant to rally people against rape, but actually force people to take a long, hard, unblinking look at rape (they literally never cut away when it happens) for what it really is, where it really comes from, and how it really happens. It wants us to see what we miss when we look away from something like this, ESPECIALLY when someone gets away with it.

You may have missed part of the subtext of that early scene.

The point of him killing the wrong man 9as we later learn) is to point out how pointless the act of revenge turned out to be.

Had he killed the Tenia then it would have undermined it.

By showing that he killed the wrong guy it underlined the tragedy. All three of the leads lives are destroyed and the villain escapes unscathed - heck he actually looks happy .Given he's a true Sadist he probably enjoyed seeing the murder.

Perhaps the Tenia gets caught later - given people know his nickname it's actually fairly likely the Police know the man and when the others tell him the story they will seek him out. He left plenty of evidence at the scene. Thats not the point of the movie though, it's not about giving us a nice clean dose of righteous revenge.

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I don't think there's a message against rape in the movie, I don't think that's the point of it, I think it talks about violence getting out of control, and I think that the mistake made by Marcus and Pierre is kinda accurate for that feeling, they wanted revenge, not for justice, but for revenge, they go and look for someone by a nickname, Marcus don't even check or waits for the killed man to answer his questions.

I don't care what you sick realists say. No freaking way that rapist does what he did and lives.

Ultimately, I think the point the director is saying with this scene is how the normally reserved, cerebral and empathetic Pierre succumbs to the base instincts of human race and just snaps and is the one who actually commits the murder via fire extinguisher. Throughout the film, he is presented as the level headed yin to Marcus' aggressive and base yang. I think Noe is making a very cynical commentary on human nature and how no matter how hard we try to bury that ugliness and violence that lies in our hearts, it can surface at any time. Chilling movie that says a lot about human nature, pointlessness of revenge, the vile acts we are capable of, man vs man child behavior and cowardice (the person who briefly witnesses the rape, but does nothing to aid Alex, one of the most subtly effective moments of the entire film in my opinion).