Review: Berlin Syndrome

"Nobody can hear you," Andi (Max Riemelt) tells Clare (Teresa Palmer) when he notices her muffling her moans as he performs oral sex on her. He'll repeat that line later, but to much more sinister effect in the compelling drama, Berlin Syndrome.

Together with Hounds of Love, another Australian feature dealing with the horrific and twisted games people play, Berlin Syndrome, adapted by Shaun Grant from the novel by Melanie Joosten and directed by Cate Shortland, is more interested in the psychological nuances rather than the cheap and sensationalistic aspects of this particular tale. As its title suggests, this narrative involves captivity and the emotional complications that ensue between the captive and the captor.

Brisbane native Clare has decided to backpack around Europe to pursue her photographic passions. To that end, she arrives in Berlin, camera in hand, ready to snap photos of the buildings from the GDR era. Aimlessly wandering around the city, she's a little more than lonely, open to making connections such as the one she makes with a group of people having a party on the rooftop of the hostel where she is staying as well as the one she makes with Andi when she helps him pick up the books he's dropped on the sidewalk.

Clare is attracted to Andi, not only to his good looks but to his appealing nature. They spend the day together and when he drops her off at her hostel later that night, both reluctantly say goodbye to one another. The next morning, Clare decides to delay her departure for Dresden and search for Andi. When she finds him, not only does she spend the day with him but the night as well. The next morning, she finds herself alone in his apartment, unable to leave because the door is bolted. It was an innocent mistake, Andi explains when he returns home that night, he thought he had left the key for her. Yet the realisation of her imprisonment dawns on her the next morning when she not only discovers that the key that he does leave doesn't work, but that the windows are reinforced, her mobile has been stripped of its SIM card, and that he has taken a photo of her sleeping figure with the word "Mine" scrawled on her back.

Shortland observes Andi going about his everyday life in the outside world, providing us with scenes that illuminate not only his abnormal attitudes about the female of the species but with strong hints that Clare is not his first victim. These are juxtaposed with the domesticity he enforces upon Clare. There are many instances where their exchanges resemble more a couple undergoing extreme problems in their relationship. It's this grey area that Shortland probes - both Clare and Andi appear to have genuine feelings for one another, but those feelings are muddied by the wrongness of the situation. Riemelt and especially Palmer are terrific, the former humanising the monster and the latter in foregoing the predictable pluck in favour for something more ambivalent.

Berlin Syndrome

Directed by: Cate Shortland

Written by: Shaun Grant; adapted from the novel by Melanie Joosten

Starring: Teresa Palmer, Max Riemelt, Matthias Habich, Lucie Aron, Cem Tuncay, Emma Bading