Though Australian director Cate Shortland‘s adaptation of Melanie Joosten‘s novel about a tourist imprisoned by a handsome teacher after a passionate one-night-stand is a thriller (quite heart-pounding at times), and much of the woman’s mistreatment is extremely hard to watch, this highly absorbing psychological drama stands out because it’s all about the characters and what’s going on in their heads.
So abundant we might as well make them their own genre, movies about kidnapped females generally go one of two ways: It’s either all about the suspense, figuring out how and if she will get out-or there’s the nastier route, the really low road, when some movies focus on a woman’s torture and humiliation, turning it into spectacle. Teresa Palmer and Max Riemelt in 'Berlin Syndrome' (eOne, Netflix) 10.
