Barbara

Tórshavn in the 18th century: Poul, the new pastor for Várga parish, arrives by ship in the Faroe archipelago’s capital. Among the people waiting there for him is Barbara, the widow of his two(!) predecessors, their comparatively early demises blamed on her demanding nature. Barbara is indeed a free spirit who chooses to love or pleasure whom she fancies. Despite all the locals’ spiteful, envious warnings, Poul falls in love with her.
Barbara is a visually splendid, wryly ironic melodrama about marriage, desire, rumour-mongering, hypocrisy, promiscuity, faith and fidelity based on Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen’s eponymous classic; and Malmros’s only film rooted essentially in his passion for cinema: Barbara looks and feels like his version of a Truffaut costume drama, i.e. a work in the vein of La Sirène du Mississippi (1969) or L’histoire d’Adèle H. (1975). An overlooked masterpiece ripe for serious re-appraisal.