Barbara, a young girl, lives in an old country house with her father and her teacher. One night, she dreams that a fireman enters her room through the window. Having grown, Barbara leaves her father to travel across the world, before coming back to her childhood fantasies: one day, she calls the firemen, and locks herself with one of them in her bedroom.
Direction
Arrieta's languid, anti-narrative dream logic.
Cinematography
Soft-focus desire and claustrophobic chiaroscuro.
Acting
Loeb's opaque, fascinatingly unreadable Barbara.

Director
Adolfo Arrieta
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of 1970s French 'cinema du corps'—films obsessed with bodies, desire, and narrative refusal. Arrieta was expat Spanish, adding outsider gaze.
Dionys Mascolo (the father) was Marguerite Duras's husband and a noted literary critic. Small French cinema world.