Hounds of Love

In Perth in December 1987, seventeen-year-old Vicki sneaks out to a party and gets into the car of a couple she meets on the way. In their house she is chained to a bed. The only way out is to use the tension between husband and wife. The film is not interested in displaying violence. It is interested in the mechanics of the relationship: Evelyn is bound to her husband, jealous, and a victim herself, and once Vicki sees it the game changes. The real tension comes from a three-way psychological negotiation. The form is cold and orderly: a suburban house, a slow-motion opening, eighties pop songs and most of the violence left outside the frame. The director does not show the worst moments; he leaves their sound. It is Ben Young's first feature. The story is fiction but the source is plain: David and Catherine Birnie, the couple who abducted and killed four young women in Perth in the 1980s. The film screened at the Venice festival in 2016. Ashleigh Cummings plays Vicki, with Emma Booth and Stephen Curry as the couple. Booth's work is the film's strongest element. Who it is for: viewers who like psychological thrillers and the hard vein of Australian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who avoids films involving abduction and sexual violence. It does not show them, but implies them constantly.