1980 in an East German provincial town. "I could come over and live with you here. We could be happy here," the West German lover of East German doctor Barbara, who wants to leave the GDR, muses during a secret rendez-vous. She sits up abruptly. "Are you crazy? One cannot be happy here." The entire film by Christian Petzold (whose script shines with beautiful dialogues) revolves around this scene.Much lauded stage and film actor Nina Hoss (we had her onstage at the Stratford Festival in 2008) plays her favourite role, a volcano, cool and rough on the outside, seething and emotional on the inside. It is her 5th film with Petzold; for "Yella" she received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale five years ago.
There are moments where the film threatens to slip. Do we need to see the evil Stasi officer's dying wife to understand we're all human? The subplot of the two "difficult" youths in Barbara's hospital seems functional at times, not given the credit it is due, mainly there to force Barbara's not-so-surprising final decision. The film's beauty lies in the subdued romanticism of the tender nearly-not love story between her and her new colleague Andre. See actor Ronald Zehrfeld in his more typical role of a hard-boiled cop fighting the Russian mafia in Berlin in our upcoming GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox series "In the Face of Crime" in May.
