Doris Dörrie is one of the brightest figures on the Western European film scene today. Her absorbing dramas are at once startlingly perceptive yet youthful, with a keen feel for the ineffable mysteries of character motivation. In the Belly of the Whale is Dorrie's second feature following the very successful Straight Through the Heart (1984); again, she depicts a young woman's conflicting needs for freedom and a father's love, deflected onto a seemingly inappropriate relationship with an older man, but the pace here is quite the opposite of her earlier chamber-piece for two players. In the Belly of the Whale begins in the home of a policeman and his teenage daughter who suffers all the abuse and jealousy he can no longer foist on his estranged wife. But the film turns into a freewheeling road movie part way through when the girl takes to the highway in search of her mother and finds, instead, the kind companionship of an older man who picks her up. The two become the object of a massive man-hunt when the father reports the supposed kidnapping, and a psychological game of hide-and-seek turns into tragedy. Selected for The Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New Films '86.