Berlin Syndrome

Premiering at Sundance earlier in the year, this thriller truly holds its audience on a seat edge. The capital of Germany is a backdrop not so much for backpacking but entrapment and captive terror.

Young Australian tourist Clare (Teresa Palmer) is visiting Berlin and before she moves on she meets local guy Andi (Max Riemelt). They hit it off but he wants her as his own and she ends up shut into his apartment. He’s taken her SIM card, documents her with Polaroids and keeps her locked up.

Cate Shortland who directs this tense picture manages to keep a generally taut line with the events that unfold. Everything is almost nerve-shredding apart from a couple of places where the film sort of lulls and threatens to dissipate the clever and well held suspense.

I have to say the movie feels like an ordeal but in a good way - it’s like you’re going through the ringer with Clare. We have a Beauty and we have the Beast, but unlike the romantic Stockholm Syndrome in Disney’s classic, this story lurches from uncomfortable to worse as we follow Andi and understand just how little shame he feels for anything. There’s moments of hope, glimmers of good, flashes of violence and up and down moments of lust and shared loneliness between prisoner and captor which makes for a smart and deep plot.