Barbara

It’s a film of scenes rather than of one unified narrative, but each scene is a showcase for the magnificent talents of Ms. Balibar, a multifaceted performer of spectacular magnetism and intelligence.

In Barbara, the process of filmmaking is shown to be a nesting series of shells that allow one to be simultaneously freed and lost.

The movie lightly plumbs that dangerously unsettled space between performing and literally being the protagonist in a biopic.

This is a loving tribute not only to the late Barbara (1930-97), the inimitable singing icon of the French chanson, but also to the star of this film, Jeanne Balibar, whose brilliant performance is boosted here by her uncanny physical resemblance to the late“Dame en noir”, as Barbara used to be called by her admirers.

There’s something admirably honest about the meta-method Amalric and co-writer Philippe Di Folco have chosen.

Once you settle into your bewilderment, however, Barbara an oddly alluring film that does a double backflip on hokey showbiz-bio convention: not an informative introduction to the singer by any means, but a suitably eccentric evocation of her creative essence.

Amalric puts all of the esoteric artistic tendencies that are part and parcel of the creative process into “Barbara” and comes up with an incoherent mess of a docu-drama. The entire film feels like a playful experiment that never evolves beyond a concept, like an unlit cigarette, never getting the spark it needs to fulfill its purpose.