Movie Review: Berlin Syndrome

Date nights are already hard enough to organise, and they’re being made even harder by cinema’s current obsession with abduction flicks.

Over the next few weeks, you can take a date to Beauty and the Beast (monster abducts woman), Get Out (white people abduct black man), Snatched (men abduct mother-daughter duo) or Spider-Man: Homecoming (Tom Holland abducts paying work from Andrew Garfield).

And then there’s Berlin Syndrome, the new thriller from Australian director Cate Shortland, whose resume (Somersault, Lore) has hardly been filled with easy-going, romantic larks.

However, some pictures are worth complicating relationships over. Berlin Syndrome—which tells of an Australian backpacker who becomes the houseguest and eventual prisoner of her German fling—is indeed icky and unnerving. But at least it’ll give you something to talk about over dinner.

Teresa Palmer stars as Clare, an untethered Brisbane woman travelling around Berlin, eager and open to new experiences and new friendships. Andi (Max Riemelt), a sweet-seeming teacher quick with gentle compliments, offers both. She spends a night at his apartment—nestled in an isolated, empty building—only to find herself locked inside the next day. When Andi returns from work, she asks why he didn’t leave her a key. They fall into bed before he needs to invent an answer. The next morning, she’s trapped again. Her months-long torment begins with him feigning ‘aw shucks’ innocence. Berlin Syndrome shows how banal “niceness” can precede ultimate evil.

So far, Shortland has only made good features. Her streak is not broken here. Besides a confusingly constructed climax, Berlin Syndrome is expertly composed and exhaustingly tense.

Of course, no reasonable viewer could find pleasure in a film wherein a young woman is held against her will and forced into uncomfortable acts. Room, for which Brie Larson won an Oscar, similarly tested audience patience with its claustrophobic premise. Berlin Syndrome prolongs the anxiety.

Where Room was purely the survivors’ story, Berlin Syndrome focuses on the uneasy alliance formed by prisoner and keeper. As Clare comes to realise her confinement will not be short-lived, her attitude shifts from rebellion to compliance to, ultimately, dependence. (Palmer, pushed to the hilt, is great.) Berlin Syndrome, adapted by Shaun Grant from Melanie Joosten’s book of the same name, tries to explain how captives come to love and care for their captors. Shortland never puts us on Andi’s side, but she shows his side nonetheless.

The immediacy of Clare’s danger shifts over the course of the film, depending on Andi’s temperamental whims. Riemelt, effectively the only other major player in the picture, is excellent too. His Andi is sensitive and fully capable of sweetness, yet dangerously entitled (and easily bored), to the point that he can inflict violence on someone for whom he cares deeply.

In fact, Clare is most at danger when she is most affectionate towards Andi. He grows tired of her, having finally become satisfied; it’s as if her obedience was the true conquest, and not her body. As a damaged parable of domestic violence and deranged monogamy, Berlin Syndrome is scathing.

Again, this movie will not make your next date night easier. And it’s not meant to.

3.5/5

In cinemas April 20. Rated MA15+ for strong themes, violence and sex scenes.

Photo: Entertainment One