![]() No one had ever tried anything like this before, when this TV series started. They share a night of passion, with the camera lingering on Clare's pleasure, but, as the sun.Collider: This show was a huge undertaking. Andi is charming and intellectual, and not the kind of man that Clare, or many other people, would have qualms about following home for sex. Clare has plans to fly to Amsterdam, but a chance encounter with a handsome schoolteacher named Andi (Max Riemelt)-who, conveniently, teaches English, allowing the film to play out without awkward language barriers-has her reconsidering. And, significantly, it addresses them through a riveting piece of art cinema made not-so-coincidentally with women in key production roles.īerlin Syndrome stars Teresa Palmer as Clare, an Australian backpacking while on sabbatical in Berlin, where she takes photographs when not boozing with other guests at her hostel or rummaging through art books in shops. Unlike slick and glossy American thrillers such as Enough (Michael Apted, 2002) or Sleeping with the Enemy (Joseph Ruben, 1991)-in which Jennifer Lopez's and Julia Roberts' respective characters fight off abusive husbands, the latter even faking her own death in a plot twist reminiscent of some sort of absurd game of Mad Libs-Berlin Syndrome posits actual answers for the terrible questions people ask of sexual-violence survivors. It's one less premised on the kind of psychological entrapment experienced by the characters played by Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, instead focusing on a woman who is physically unable to escape the violent circumstances that she has been locked in. This one is less symbiotic, with even murkier edges and scarier real-world concepts. Like Big Little Lies, Berlin Syndrome (Cate Shortland, 2017) is adapted from a novel by an Australian author -in this case, Melanie Joosten's book of the same Name-but charts another kind of violent relationship. To interrogate why somebody, say, doesn't just walk away from an abusive relationship isn't just insensitive, but profoundly cruel-not least of all because the victim has no doubt already asked themselves that and many other related questions. In these situations, there are often dozens of unknowable answers to unaskable questions. But, as we saw in this year's much-talked-about HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, which courted media attention and controversy for its depiction of domestic violence, it is rarely that simple. That we are smart enough to not be hoodwinked in the first place, or have the strength to leave, or have the power to escape. We all like to imagine that, if we found ourselves in the sorts of physically or emotionally violent situations that we hear about on the news and see in the movies, we would be strong enough to extricate ourselves. Why didn't she just leave? they might ask. ![]() ACCORDING TO GLENN DUNKS, THE FILM ALSO INCITES REFLECTION ON UNEQUAL GENDER RELATIONSHIPS AS WELL AS SOCIETY'S DEFICIENT SENSITIVITIES TOWARDS ABUSE VICTIMS. SUBVERTING THE MORE CONVENTIONAL 'PRISONER BEFRIENDS CAPTOR' PLOTLINE, BERLIN SYNDROME DEPICTS THE COMBATIVE AND, IN TIME, SEEMINGLY CONGENIAL DYNAMIC BETWEEN A FEMALE AUSTRALIAN BACKPACKER AND THE GERMAN MAN WHO HAS TRAPPED HER IN HIS APARTMENT.
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