Barbara is a radical biopic. It’s ostensibly about the French singer, Barbara, played by Jeanne Balibar. But it’s also about the limits of cinema to capture truth; the possibilities and weaknesses of artifice. Director Amalric makes no attempt to tell a linear story. What we get are fragments, moments, recreations. The presence of the film crew is a constant: the trick of playing a scene and then pulling back the curtains to show the machinery functioning on the other side of the camera is used on various occasions. At one point, one of the real characters from Barbara’s life watches the filming of a scene in which he is fictionally represented, then permitting him to step in and explain to the crew that the room they’ve recreated doesn’t tally with the real room. Amalric himself appears frequently in the film as the director, frustrated by his inability to recapture the woman he knew in her entirety. This ludic film is held together by a barnstorming performance from Balibar. She both embodies the singer, and also embodies herself as actress impersonating the singer. We see her rehearsing Barbara’s gestures. We see the line between the actress and the character elide to such a degree that at times it’s hard to tell which is which; a considerable achievement to both play the role and reveal the playing of the role at the same time. At the end of the film I was little the wiser about the details of Barbara’s life; but much the wiser about both her music and her idiosyncratic soul.
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