IN A small Baltic coastal town in 1980s East Germany, conversation is minimal:  the sea is the backdrop that seethes with emotion and colour. Barbara, a young paediatrician who used to work in East Berlin's prestigious Charité hospital, was transferred here as a punishment for applying for a visa to emigrate to the West. Her friends have disowned her. The film starts just as her new provincial life begins.
 
Although this is fiction, the director, Christian Petzold, based it on the experience of an East German doctor he learned of some years ago. The film won him the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival this February.

Barbara is a reticent, cautious woman, brilliantly played by Nina Hoss, one of Germany's best stage and film actresses. She knows she is under permanent surveillance by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. With amazing self-control she puts up with the repeated intrusions of Stasi officers and their humiliating strip-searches. It is clear that she has emotionally distanced herself from her country; her only aim is to leave it. “It's impossible to be happy here,” she tells her West German lover Jörg during one of their hurried clandestine meetings on his business trips to the German Democratic Republic. He is preparing her escape. She is wary not to raise suspicion.
 
She keeps herself aloof from André, the boss of the clinic, afraid he may be an informer to the Stasi too. However, she can't avoid working with him—she can't quite distance herself from her profession. She likes the work as much as he does. Little by little she becomes captivated by André's unassuming manner, his selfless and tireless help for his patients regardless their social background (including a young girl who has escaped from a youth prison). East German provincial hospitals in the early 1980s required a great deal of improvisation, given the regular shortages of supplies. Eventually André's calm, serene voice and brown eyes get under her skin (Ronald Zehrfeld is pretty irresistible to the female film-goer).
 
Very gently the film shows Barbara's developing affection for this man. When her lover assures her that she won't have to work in the West, since he owns enough for two, she finds herself second-guessing her desires. Will life on the other side of the Iron Curtain really bring the freedom she was hoping for? This is where the film puts its finger on the paradox of the two Germanys, and the huge differences that came to light with the act of unification.
 
No other movie about East Germany in the past 20 years (including the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others”) has touched me, a former East German, as much as this one. It vividly brought back memories and emotions I had long forgotten. Everything is just so in this film, nothing exaggerated or glorified. In a convincing unhurried way, Mr Petzold has caught the spirit and atmosphere of the time. Each gesture, each tableau, from the hospital equipment and apartment furnishings to the smallest accessory, such as a folkloristic Bulgarian ashtray (something no East German household could be without) is rendered just right. Spiritually, too, the film airs the values that many East Germans feel have got lost in the more opulent, materialist world of a unified Germany. It is a fine homage to ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

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