Barbarella

Decent watch, might watch again, but can't recommend unless it's for a Bad Movie Night. I want to like this movie, it really might have been a great movie, once upon a time, but it still would have been a "comedy-whatever" movie, and it's humor is done well. The production value is laughable 50 years later, but even so there are odd choices most likely done for the imagery or comedic effect. It is worth noting the changes in the MPAA over the past 50 years: the movie begins with a "zero g" striptease with tits out and fully nude (I didn't look close enough to determine if the cat got out), and from then on, her tits are pretty much out for about half the run time, sometimes behind plastic or transparent fabric, but the movie is rated PG. I want to like the movie, but it's so bizarre at times, and it's not a personal story for Barbarella it's an assigned mission, so it's hard to be invested in the actual story.

Revolutionary in its time, and still highly regarded today, it is an attack on good visual taste and brings a very stupid story. There are films that stand out because they are really very good, for the high quality of the production, the work of the actors and the story that is told. But a film doesn't become popular or iconic just for that... there are films that are so admittedly bad and strange that, in a way, they become remarkable and enter the so-called popular memory or collective memory. _Barbarella_ is a film inspired by a 60's comic book, and both the original material and the film itself were very influenced by the “hippie” culture, the libertarian ideas of May 68 and the Sexual Revolution. It was a time when eroticism became popular and massively sought after and exploited by the arts. Only if we understand this can we understand why this film is the way it is. Despite doing justice to the source material, the script tells a story so fanciful and idiotic that only someone from that time could appreciate it: Barbarella is (I really don't want to have to take this stereotype, but it's blatant) a dumb blonde, immensely attractive, who is sent by Planet Earth to another galaxy, in search of a lost scientist and the weapons he had. She comes into contact with various aliens and is almost always seduced or "convinced" into having sex. At a certain point, she becomes involved in a rebellion against a queen of a perverse city, where they try to kill her in a machine that causes an "overdose" of sexual pleasure. Obviously, this fails, and the movie ends with the blonde astronaut winning. I didn't see sex scenes in the film, but the character appears half-naked many times, which then was truly revolutionary – almost pornographic. For us, the way she is seduced is so clearly misogynistic that in some cases it would be a crime, and it's hard for me to think that the film was so calmly received, but those were other times. If this film were released now, without a doubt, it would be so controversial for its sexist sexuality that I think the feminist movements would boycott it. Also, the dialogues, the situations and the whole concept of the movie are pretty dumb. The film was a French-American production and a good part of the cast is French-speaking, and I would like to highlight, on the positive side, the participation of the great Marcel Marceau, in a small but relevant speaking role. The director was Roger Vadim, and then he was married to the actress and sex symbol Jane Fonda, who, thus, secured the protagonist role. For future memory exist the statements, by the actress and the director, about Fonda's insecurity about herself and the way she didn't feel comfortable with the character and her nudity. Even so, and despite everything, Fonda did what she could with the terrible material she was given. We can still positively highlight the contributions of John Phillip Law and Anita Pallenberg. Technically, the film stands out for its futuristic “trash” scenography, evident, for example, in the protagonist's ship and in the city of Sogo. It can be visually horrible, an attack on good taste or logic, but back then it was something quite avant-garde, as were the costumes, particularly Barbarella's sexy spacesuits (which could almost be used as bathing suits). The rest is pretty bad: the cinematography is boring and dull, the camera work is average, the soundtrack is kitsch.

I can't help but wonder what Jane Fonda might think if she were to look back on this sexy sci-fi nonsense from 50 years ago. It is not alone in being terrible - there were plenty of drug-induced/enhanced films made in the late 60s so as to render this particular effort indeterminable from many others; but the fact that Fonda took on this role as an intergalactic space cadet on the search for "Durand Durand" and his (euphemistic ?) "Positronic Ray" is what is astonishing. The script is dreadful, the props buyer obviously didn't have the budget to stretch beyond paper mâché and bubble-wrap and the synthesised music is only marginally more interesting than that you might have heard in a Soviet lift around the same time. John Philip Law was already in his 30's when he agreed to dress in a large nappy and don some huge angelic wings as "Pygar" and Anita Pallenberg "The Great Tyrant" was pretty much never seen on screen again. It has acquired cult status, but as is usual with most similarly described films - nobody is ever truly sure why...