Review of Barbara (2012) by Lasttimeisaw — 06 May 2015

A double-bill of contemporary Germany's leading director Christian Petzold’s most recent films BARBARA and PHOENIX, both are executed with the same team and stars Nina Hoss, Petzold’s longtime muse and Ronald Zehrfeld as two leads, punctiliously examine the mentality of German people in the post-WWII era.

In BARBARA, the locale is a rural surrounding of 1980s East Germany, Hoss is the titular Barbara, a doctor newly banished to a small hospital due to some unexplained collusion with West Germany, Barbara’s frosty bearing means she is not here to make friends, and her condition is sympathising although the hostility and vigilance between her and her colleagues is mutual, but she is also constantly under surveillance from the authority after hours, she even has to endure the humiliation of her body being manually checked each time when they launch a fine-tooth comb in her small unadorned apartment. However Barbara has her own secret, she has a West German lover Jörg (Waschke) who apparently is a rich business man and planning to rescue her from the repressive and authoritarian East Germany, Jörg even comes to visit her frequently and they engage in some uninhibited carnal knowledge.