NZIFF: Barbara

After the impatient cinematography of Beasts of the Southern Wild and the camera's handheld shifting in Monsieur Lazhar that I'd enjoyed the night before, I must say that the sober, stationary framing in the first few moments of Christian Petzold's Barbara came as a welcome visual relief.

The relief was short-lived however as director Christian Petzold's claustrophobic treatment of the East German world of Barbara took hold. Nina Hoss plays the eponymous character, a doctor from Berlin who after attempting to emigrate to the West, has been banished to a quiet East German village.

Petzold sets his story in summer, which seems to only underline the anti-idyll of this world for his lead character. Subject to constant surveillance and unable to move without the sense that the Stasi (the GDR's secret police) are watching, Barbara remains cold to her surroundings and the people within. This extends to her new workmate André (Ronald Zehrfeld), a fellow doctor at the country hospital she has been posted to. While André shows a kindness towards the new doctor, like Barbara, we too are wary of his motivations.

Petzold creates an intriguing slow-burning narrative which subtly surprises and ultimately rewards. In Hoss, he has an actor whose restrained performance keeps us mesmerised from the first few frames. Perhaps if she was rigidly cold throughout, our interest could be lost, however the presence of a young troubled patient in the hospital, Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer), offers moments in which Barbara's humanity and softness is revealed.

Anyone who loved The Lives of Others should certainly see Barbara. Significantly different in their treatment of the tense, regimented world of the GDR, (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s narrative twists in The Lives of Others are a marked contrast to Petzold’s staid psychological story-telling) they are still two films with all the mechanisms of spy dramas, which in fact contain love stories at their core. And are not without a good dash of hope.