Rewatching Cate Shortland's _Lore_ on DVD confirmed what I suspected
the first time -- this is clearly one of the decade's best film, and
Shortland is one of our best directors. The story is emotional
and revelatory: a teenage girl, daughter of fervent Fascist parents,
brings her young siblings across Allied-occupied, defeated Germany
in 1945 to safety. The girl Hannelore is treated with exemplary
empathy, even as she spouts Nazi ideology that she gradually realizes
to be lies. The DVD extras reveal that the photographs, carried by
the older "Jewish" boy who helps her, belong to Shortland's husband's
Jewish family. For someone with such a family background to make
such a sympathetic, heroically humanistic film about the children
of Nazi's, is truly inspiring.

But what is truly inspiring is Shortland's extraordinary artistry.
The intricate lighting, the intimiate hand-help camera work, the
Terrence Malick-like editing and insertion of glimpses of idyllic
nature in the midst of war -- they are a wonder to behold. There
are only a few dolly shots, mostly in the Nazi father's grandiose
mansion in the beginning; these are especially psychologically astute.
(In one scene, the camera leads Lore walking down a hallway until
she hears a gunshot and stops, but the camera keeps receding.) The
acting is astonishing, especially given that Shortland isn't fluent
in German and the lead actress Saskia Rosendahl is a dancer without
acting experience. A special mention goes to Ursina Lardi who
plays her mother and is gone after the first 20 minutes, but who
sure leaves an indelible impression. I'll be following the careers
of this trio of women for a long time. Art house cinema has been
in such abject poverty lately, with the highly touted films being
increasingly programmatic and formulaic. Then a film like _Lore_
comes along, far superior to film festival "favorites" I've seen
for years; it reminds me of what Cinema had once achieved, and
could still be capable of in the future. ------------------------------------------------------------

I made it a point of driving 100 miles roundtrip to see Shortland's
new film _The Berlin Syndrome_ on the big screen, even though
it is already available for streaming. It is nothing like I
expected from the director's previous work or the reviews I've read.
Shooting in Germany again, Shortland dispenses with her trademark
color filters and goes for monochromatic grittiness, although the
wintry landscapes give the film a different type of beauty --
austere, even majestic. The opening shots -- rooftops over
post-unification Berlin -- clearly announce a homage to Claire
Denis and _Trouble Every Day_, even though not a single review
I've read seems to notice. Like the Denis film, which is an
original take on the vampire myth, _The Berlin Syndrome_ plays
with the horror genre (girl held prisoner by psychotic male) and
mutates into something infinitely more interesting.

Clare is an Australian wallflower who gets laid off and travels
to Berlin. Her backstory is never given, although her neediness
suggests she might have been recently dumped by a boyfriend.
She refuses to learn the language before flying half a world
away, slums in a youth hostel, and gravitates towards exploring
and photographing the most rundown, graffiti-filled, former
German Democratic Republic part of the town. The Fernsehtum
(the TV Tower) looms round the corner, but instead of visiting
the famous Alexanderplatz landmark, she rumages in second
hand bins containing ancient tape recorders. With barely a
word of dialog (she is shy and seldom talks about herself
anyway), the film establishes her as someone running from a
past, luxuriating in anonymity, flattered by the outsider
status her stranger-in-a-strange-land status bestows on and
justifies to her.

She runs into handsome highschool teacher Andi (Max Riemelt).
Initially he rebuffs her advance but when they meet again
in a used bookstore (he is reading a book on Klimt, apparently
her favorite painter), they heads to his apartment. Here
lies the film's genius -- his lives in an abandoned East
German apartment complex, the only tennant in a huge building
ringing a well-hidden courtyard. It is like a garish prison
tower, a dilapidated castle. (Claire Denis, who loves urban
decay, will be green with envy when she sees the location.)
It is also like outerspace -- he locks her in and no one can
hear her scream.

Clare is held for an interdeterminate period, tries to escape
(wrecking her hand and Andi's in the process), pliantly puts
on lingerie to entertain him, passively cooks and read
all day. He photographs her naked while she is asleep
... along the way, the film makes biting commentary on the
power relation in heterosexual relationships, on the thin
line between art and pornography, adulation and objectication
of women. (One of his dirty picture is hidden in a Klimt
coffee book.)

Teresa Palmer plays Clare. The Australian actress is known
to be fearless and without vanity, repeatedly appearing without
make-up and looking like a ghost. She also impresses in _The
Ever After_ and _Knight of Cups_. Watching her multifaceted
performance, you wonder what people see in _Room_, about
another imprisoned woman (always in perfect make-up), which won
Brie Larson an Oscar.

The depiction of Andi is quite brilliant too. We get to know
a lot about this outwardly normal monster without being asked
to be sympathetic. His mother has abandoned him and his father
long ago. (Is she a floozy? is that why he hates women who
throw themselves at him, and secures his flat so that his
preys can never leave?) He tries to follow his distant father's
footstep (he is a professor of literature) and is a loner among
his colleagues. The film never stoops to explaining his
psychopathology, which only creeps up gradually on you. Slowly
we realize that the night he rebuffs Clare is the night he
needs to get home and kill his previous prey before ensnaring
the replacement. The slow-burn, subtle screenplay is very
good at telling us who the complex protagonists really are.

In the end, Clare rouses herself from her stupor just in time.
Andi gets his just punishment. The last shot finds Clare
in the light, on the ground, among "normal" people in the touristy
area. Her romantic idea of her uniqueness may be shattered,
but hopefully her eyes are now opened to new opportunities,
a new sense of self.

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The opening shots -- rooftops over
post-unification Berlin -- clearly announce a homage to Claire
Denis and _Trouble Every Day_, even though not a single review
I've read seems to notice.

The title should be _Berlin Syndrome_.

I don't know if Cate Shortland studies the films of Claire Denis.
I certainly thought that the soundtrack in _Berlin Syndrome_
reminds me of the music of Tindersticks and Stuart Staples, who
scored many of Denis' films.

There seem to be a few other resemblances between the two directors.
Both are late bloomers; Denis's first feature was made in her late
30s. She was slighty older than Shortland at the time of _Somersault_.
Both have spent time in Africa; in the _Lore_ DVD extras, Shortland
reveals that she lived in South Africa. (She seems to have an adopted
son from there, although I'm just speculating.) One huge difference
is that Cateland is very much celebrated by the her home country's
film industry, while Denis is practically unknown in France. When
I was in Paris a few years ago, none of the video stores carried her
work, and none of the assistants working in those stores have heard
of her!

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