Tuesday 20 November 2012

New (German) film: 'BARBARA'

Sombre, unassuming, rather slow-paced, but not ineffectual drama set in 1980s East Germany involving a nurse 'exiled' to work in a small rural hospital because of her desire to leave the country in order to live with her lover who is resident in the west. She has understandable suspicions of whom, if anyone, she can trust, and she has her apartment subjected to random spot checks by the Stasi, as well as having to undergo intimate body-searches. During clandestine 'conjugal' visits by her partner plans are made for her to escape the country under subterfuge, but all the while she feels increasing responsibility not to desert the patients at the hospital - and one girl in particular - while she entertains an ambivalence towards her supervising doctor who feels a growing attraction towards her.
     All this sounds more eventful than what actually plays out before our eyes on screen.

It's an efficiently-made film, though hardly one I'm going to remember for more than a few days.

I grant 'Barbara' a rating of.......................6/10..... (though now, one day later, this feels a bit on the high side and I want to take it down a notch to 5.5)

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