BARBARA
| 2018 – 98′ – Drama, Biopic, Music & Dance, Films About Cinema.
Written by: Mathieu Amalric, Philippe Di Folco.
Directed by: Mathieu Amalric.
Starring: Jeanne Balibar, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Peirani, Aurore Clément, Grégoire Colin, Fanny Imber, Pierre Michon, Fanny Peirani.
Official Selection Cannes International Film Festival 2017 (Un Certain Regard).
Official Competition COLCOA 2018.
In French with English subtitles.
A Gaumont release. |
Jeanne Balibar won the César Award for Best Actress for her role as Brigitte, an actress playing real-life chanteuse Barbara, who remains a beloved musical icon in France some 20 years after her death. Brigitte plies her craft, channeling the late singer for the film’s obsessed director… who is played by, none other than, Mathieu Amalric, this film’s real-life director. Add to the mix the fact that Balibar and Amalric have a long professional and personal history and you begin to peel away the many layers of this reflexive cinematic onion. This is not your typical biopic! Rather than attempting to fabricate a pat narrative based on the singer’s life, Amalric prefers to orchestrate a hypnotic pastiche of overlapping gestures, voices and faces. The result is a delicate, intelligent, moving paean to music, cinema and the art-making process, filled with tenderness — indeed love — for both its eponymous subject and its radiant leading lady. No wonder the film was honored with a special Poetry of Cinema Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.