Director Report Card: Cate Shortland (2017)

4. Berlin Syndrome

Throughout her still developing career, Cate Shortland has flirted with the thriller genre. "Somersault" had that one, brilliantly tense sequence. “The Silence” hovered around being a thriller without ever succeeding at it. “Lore” was certainly grim and unsettling, though not exactly in the way you expect from a genre effort. All along, the director was clearly showing mastery of the various building blocks necessary to make good suspense. With her fourth feature, she would finally commit. “Berlin Syndrome,” based on a novel by Melanie Joosten, sees Shortland moving in a more commercial direction without leaving behind the ideas she's explored in her previous films.

Clare, an Australian backpacker, travels to Berlin in hopes of photographing the sights of the German city. She meets a handsome man named Andi, a teacher. The two spend the night together. The next morning, Andi goes to work and leaves Clare locked in his apartment. At first, she assumes this was a simple mistake. After Andi returns, acting as if nothing unusual happened, it becomes increasingly clear to Clare that he doesn't plan on letting her leave. He restrains her, threatens her with violence, and attempts to manipulate her. Clare quickly discovers that she is not the first girl Andi has captured either.

After quickly deducing that Andi has trapped her, Clare smashes a window with a chair. The glass is double-pained. Later, she injuries Andi and makes a run for it. He immediately scoops her back up. While out in public, she attempts to alert a young boy of what's happening. The kid doesn't speak English. After successfully alerting a bystander, Andi kills the man before he can rescue Clare. Is this frustrating for anyone else? That's precisely the point. “Berlin Syndrome” puts the audience in Clare's place. She is trapped in a seemingly inescapable hell. The viewer is trapped with her. An atmosphere of grim tension quickly overtakes you, as you wonder if there's any way out of this prison.

How you feel watching Clare's escape plans get continually dashed is how every woman trapped in an abusive relationship feels. That is what's most unsettling about “Berlin Syndrome:” There's nothing extraordinary about Andi's abuse. He repeatedly gaslights her, ignoring her concerns and treating this situation as normal. When doing horrible things to her, he insists it's her fault. He neglects her when she doesn't interest him, leaving her locked inside the apartment without power for days. When she bonds with a pet dog, he quietly, remorselessly kills it. My mom's first husband, a piece-of-shit who beat her regularly, did that too. Even the suggesting of leaving the apartment is met with a threat of violence. A girl I knew in college had a boyfriend do that to her as well. “Berlin Syndrome” is a horror movie not in spite of but precisely because of how totally plausible its horror is.

It's a horror movie for other reasons too. While Clare is trapped inside her room, she slowly uncovers clues that Andi is a serial killer. Hidden throughout the apartment are remains of the last girl Andi did this to. All of these discoveries are the kind that make you squirm: A scrapbook full of nude photographs, a lock of blonde hair fished out of a shower drain, a bloody fingernail stuck into a floorboard. You feel the same sort of revulsion Clare feels as she finds these gruesome hints. “Berlin Syndrome” shows that Cate Shortland actually has a pretty good grasp on a disquieting, even gross, type of horror.

When not suggesting acts of brutal violence, “Berlin Syndrome” occasionally actually shows them. A notable moment has a screwdriver being slammed into Andi's hand. He counters this by smashing Clare's hand into a door. Her hand is broken throughout most of the rest of the film, the camera lingering on the slow recovery and pain she must be in. This is only the second most unnerving incident of violence in the film. The most is even more subtle. After having a simple conversation with her, Andi shoves Clare in the trunk of his car in a deeply blunt fashion. The violence in “Berlin Syndrome” is realistically savage, giving it even more impact.

The film's title brings Stockholm Syndrome to mind. There are certain points throughout the movie where you wonder if, maybe, Clare has successfully fallen under Andi's unhinged spell. After his father dies, she comforts him. During a Christmas celebration, she seems to actually enjoy his conversation. At one point, she willingly consents to wearing lingerie for him. The question one must ask is this: Is Clare becoming psychologically dependent on her captor? Or is she merely playing the long con, hoping to catch him with his guard down? It's good for a thriller to have that level of uncertainly, for the audience to be kept guessing until the final reveal.

What makes Andi's psychosis and Clare's dire predicament all the more upsetting is how genuinely steamy their initial pairing is. He's charming. When they first meet up, they have some pretty hot sex. They do it again the next morning. Shortland shows a previously unnoticed skill for eroticism, in these moments. Of course, that's what allows senselessly abusive men like Andi to get away with it for so long. They are charismatic, handsome, and likable. It's another example of how all of “Berlin Syndrome” functions as a metaphor for the entire idea of an abusive relationship. The film itself lures you in with the sexy sex, before revealing the horror that hides underneath.

Though it shows her moving towards a different genre, “Berlin Syndrome” definitely looks like a Cate Shortland movie. The handheld camera work isn't present as much as usual. However, the overcast and gritty colors are definitely present and accounted for. The film has a uniformly gray color palette. Save for the occasional burst of color from some Christmas lights, which happily recalls the more colorful moments from “Somersault.” Shortland also just can't let go of the slow motion. That appears during a montage of Clare photographing herself for Andi's amusement. It's good to know the filmmaker has kept some consistent qualities along the way.

For the majority of its run time, “Berlin Syndrome” is a two person show. Teresa Palmer plays Clare. She has a lot of heavy lifting to do as an actress here. Her character spends most of the film in an extreme emotional state. When she's not outwardly panicking, she's panicking internally too. At the same time, you can spy the gears turning inside, as she tries to find some way out of a seemingly impossible situation. Clare is a girl constantly breaking apart and then coming back together again, Palmer taking us through the steps every time they happen.

Max Riemelt is the other half of that two-hander, as Andi. Riemelt is very good at something that makes Andi an even more chilling character. Most of the time, he seems perfectly normal. When talking with his dad or teaching his class, there's nothing unsettling about his behavior. When he comes home to the apartment, with flowers for Clare, asking her if she likes pesto, you're not even sure if he knows what he's doing is wrong. All of this is before he reveals the depth of sociopathy, when he coldly considers killing Clare or sets a body on fire without even pausing. There's no mask of sanity and that's the creepiest part. Every awful thing Andi does is totally justified in his own mind. Riemelt portrays all of this fantastically.

If you're looking for Shortland's pet themes in “Berlin Syndrome,” you can see some of them. Andi's relationship with his father, and his even more implied relationship with his mother, follows the theme of parenthood that has run through all her movies. Yet there might be some headier themes in “Berlin Syndrome.” Berlin is obviously a city with a long history. The story of a person being held against their will, totally under control of a homicidal and psychotic madman, seems to present certain parallels with Berlin's fascist past. Some with a better understanding of Berlin's history and location might be able to speak to this stuff more. It went over my head a little bit, I'm thinking.

It's fair to say that “Berlin Syndrome” is my favorite of Cate Shortland's films, so far. I'd argue its her best film. It is a taunt execution of a creepy premise, that is full of deeper angles worth exploring. Both lead performers do a wonderful job, Palmer creating a heroine you can root for and Riemelt creating a very disturbing antagonist. Maybe the threads of melodrama that undid Shortland's previous films for me work better with the horror/thriller genre, where heightened emotions are expected and perfectly understandable. However you slice it, “Berlin Syndrome” is a deeply unnerving and effectively grim picture that will send the kind of shiver up your spine that lingers for quite a while. [Grade: B+]

Having watched all her movies now, I'm kind of surprised that Disney chose Cate Shortland to handle a big budget action-fest. Her previous four features aren't exactly commercial. They have almost no action sequences or special effects in them. Aside from having female protagonists and her last two movies being set in Eastern Europe, I don't really see any direct line between her previous films and “Black Widow.” Which, weirdly, makes me far more interested in what's to come. I'm genuinely intrigued how these indie sensibilities will adapt to blockbuster fare... Ya know, assuming the world ever settles down enough for superhero movies to get released again.

As for my opinion on Shortland overall, she's interesting. She's got some impulses I'm not a fan but others that draw me in. I'm not sure yet if she's a director I would've jived with otherwise, at least based on her first three films. Her career is still early enough that it's possible Shortland has a masterpiece in her. “Berlin Syndrome” is getting there. I suppose, for going in blind on this one, things turned out pretty well.