Barbarella

Barbarella

Director – Roger Vadim

Writers – Jean-Claude Forest, Terry Southern, Roger Vadim

1968, France-Italy

Stars – Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg

 

It’s intentionally silly because it is fully tongue-in-cheek: not quite a spoof in the same way as ‘Airplane!’ or ‘Austin Powers’, but there’s certainly a throughline to De Laurentis’ ‘Flash Gordon’. ‘Barbarella’ parodies the kind of sci-fi-epic-porn-lite that you could find in ‘Heavy Metal’ and ‘Metal Hurlant’ magazines -  well, actually it’s based upon Jean-Claude Forest’s comic. A comedy. Yes: laugh at the alien ray-sled thing. Many reactions are from the “you can’t do that anymore” as Barbarella goes on an adventure as a somewhat slightly oblivious sex-kitten, by which they seem to mean that they lament the days where it was just fine to objectify women on screen, which tells more about them than the film. Yes, it’s unrepentantly leery and a sexy romp in a Sixties style, but the film is also far trickier and it’s too self-aware to come across as malicious. It’s too playful and parodic.

Jane Fonda may have had reservations afterwards, but her natural intelligence always shines through; she’s never dumb or quite exploited in a ‘Carry On’ manner and crucially her performance is knowing, always in on the joke, so the sexism is more a punchline than just exploitative. For comparison, the men are nothing to write home about – although the child-catcher she first meets seems hairy and fair enough (Ugo Tognazzi) – being vapidly angelic (John Philip Law) or cackhanded or duplicitous. And then there are little subversive touches such as an orgy of women bonging of essence of man.

 

It's the sets and costumes and the outrageous décor and campness that is so enjoyable. The story itself goes off into the clouds and is quite expendable, but it’s the costumes and design, the set-pieces and goofiness that matter. There’s Barbarella’s fully furred-up spaceship; the children-and-biting-dolls is a nightmarish classic; the encounter with Dildano (David Hemmings) is perhaps the most accomplished comic sequence. And if you go with it, it’s fun and gleefully of its psychedelic era.

When I saw this now at the cinema, it had the right audience laughing with and not at it, to the full benefit of the screening. It was certainly a film I enjoyed more the second time around and treating as the kind of self-aware genre amusement that are everywhere now. And then afterwards, in the tiny bar, there was a DJ playing Sixties psychedelica, which was most pleasing.