Barbara

A thrill, right from the credits. You hear Barbara without seeing her. She speaks, confusedly, like a writer, it’s already a melody. A song known to Barbara lovers, Chanson pour une absente: ‘... Paris, a November morning, not yet cold...’. You take the bait, you like it, you won’t let it go. Then an actress appears (Jeanne Balibar), a star with her entourage, who has just returned from abroad. Her name is Brigitte, and she is to play the tall dark-haired lady under the direction of a red-haired filmmake (Mathieu Amalric, himself), in a tweed jacket, a little shy, overcome with admiration. For the actress or for Barbara? Probably both. These magnificent enchantresses never stop talking to each other from a distance, playing together, blending and interchanging. So, let’s be warned: Barbara, Mathieu Amalric’s seventh film, is an ‘antibiopic’. There is no linear account of the key episodes in the singer’s life – that would be an insult to the imagination. It is not the singer’s biography that interests the director of Tournée (On Tour) (2010), but her spirit, her giddiness, her sensations, her emotions, which all rub off on us so well when we listen to her. (Jacques Morice; Télérama)