Suspicion is the secret to Barbara
Viewers must piece together the clues
Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock,
Mark Waschke, Jasna Fritzi Bauer Directed by: Christian Petzold Duration: 105 minutes
Parental guidance: Sexual
sequences Playing in German with English subtitles at the Forum cinema; in German with French subtitles at
Excentris cinema
“Is that her?” asks a doctor, looking out a window at a woman sitting on a park bench, smoking a cigarette, at the beginning of Christian Petzold’s intriguing film Barbara.
The woman, played with distrusting intensity by Nina Hoss, is the Barbara in question. She just got off a bus, where she was framed in intimate close-up as the noisy vehicle swerved along its route. Now we see her from a high angle, and from afar. She seems serious. She smokes like she has a lot on her mind and a weight on her shoulders.
The doctor, Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld), is amused. A colleague mentions Barbara’s previous incarceration. No reason is given, but she is less keen to open up to people ever since, we learn.
A crafty filmmaker, Petzold gives us information in increments. During the first half of his movie, we are all but left to our own devices; yet it is fascinating, and appropriate.
Barbara is a doctor, too, it turns out. And she has good reason to be wary. The year is 1980; after applying to emigrate to West Germany, she has been banished to work in a rural hospital, where eyes are on her, everywhere. An inspector (Rainer Bock) makes random visits to her home, where her belongings and body are searched.
As the film proceeds, Petzold’s approach is increasingly pertinent. Sounds — car engines, wind, doorbells, a ticking clock — are used with destabilizing purpose. Hans Fromm’s attentive cinematography tells us things the dialogue doesn’t.
Like Barbara, who looks with suspicion at everyone around her, and must negotiate her way through murky circumstances, we must piece together disparate clues as we wait for the direction of the plot (and of her life) to reveal itself.
Andre, it turns out, is not all bad — or is he? He has eyes for Barbara, yet he submits reports to the Stasi on her progress. The two share a genuine concern for their patients, and may have more in common than they initially think. But nothing comes easy.
Barbara meets in secret, for brief trysts with her West German boyfriend Jörg (Mark Waschke), who makes plans for her to escape and join him. And there is a troubled young female patient, Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer), about whom she is worried.
Petzold brings things to a satisfying climax while maintaining the tension of such a sinister environment, where emotions and motives must be suppressed out of self-preservation. Along the way, he brings thought-provoking nuance to an era that is too often portrayed with stereotypes and melodrama.
Germany’s unsuccessful submission for this year’s Oscar for best foreign-language film, Barbara screens with French subtitles at Excentris (in collaboration with the Goethe Institute), along with two other German films: Hans-Christian Smid’s Un Weekend en famille (Was Bleibt) and Matthias Glasner’s La Grâce (Gnade).