Hounds of Love

In 1987 Perth, a girl sneaking out to a party is picked up by a suburban couple who chain her in their spare room. Her only chance is the crack between them: the woman's jealousy, and her need to be loved by the man.

Ben Young made his debut a truly unbearable but disciplined film, which keeps most of the violence off screen and locates the horror in the domestic ordinariness of it, the shopping, the dog, the neighbours.

Emma Booth plays the woman as a victim who has become a perpetrator, and the film's insight is that the girl's survival depends on understanding the relationship better than the couple do.

It is based on the pattern of several real Australian cases and is careful not to sensationalise.

It is superbly made and it is not entertainment.