Barbarella

Barbarella is a cult classic.  It has inspired everything from the name of the 80s band Duran Duran, to the costumes of Luc Besson’s fun and wildly inventive Fifth Element, to the music video for pop sensation Arianna Grande’s “Break Free.”  I find that all very strange, since the movie itself isn’t very good. Perhaps most frustratingly it is both brilliant and terrible in equal measure, but on balance ends up more marred by its failings than elevated by its successes.

The movie takes its subject matter from a fairly racy, and obscure, French comic book by the same name.  Emulating a comic book’s episodic storytelling, Barbarella is written as essentially a series of vignettes rather than a single cohesive story.  While Barbarella, the titular character, has a mission that never changes, she moves from location to location on the planet she is exploring and each new location acts as a largely self-contained set piece.  This isn’t an inherently bad idea but the transitions are done so obviously and mechanically that it really breaks up the flow of the movie. It also isn’t helped that no specific set piece, other than the final one, is all that interesting, so each time you think the movie might be building to some captivating bit of story or world building that scene ends and Barbarella moves on to the next location.  I think it is trying to be a sort of science fiction Wizard of Oz, only instead of fun each scene feels pointless and instead of singing the characters have (off-screen) sex.

Set and costume design are perhaps the perfect encapsulation of the film’s ability to be both brilliant and terrible at the same time.  At times, the settings Barbarella moves through are inventive and cool. Her spaceship is covered in shag carpeting because who said spaceships in the future have to sacrifice style and comfort for pragmatism.  Later, Barbarella wanders through a stone maze that looks about as real as the puppet sized sets of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. A death chamber in the city has a floor that uses swirling colored water to give the appearance of some nefarious biochemical poison.  Awesome!  Later, in that same city, there is some set dressing that look like random PVC tubes were painted various colors and glued to the walls. For every hookah for smoking the essence of man there is a room full of decorations that look like they are pulled from an episode of Junkyard Wars.

Also puzzling is how the movie handles Barbarella herself.  The director can’t seem to decide if she is an empowered modern woman or a sex object to be ogled.  The cinematography routinely frames Barbarella in a sexual way. The movie opens with her doing a zero gravity strip tease.  You think: ‘Okay, it’s an exploitation movie. She’s going to use her sexuality to prevail with lots of excuses for nudity.’  Well, no.  Barbarella is selected for her mission because she is one of the most competent agents, woman or otherwise, available to the Earth government to find Durand Durand.  On that quest she doesn’t seduce her way to success, she out-thinks and out-fights her way to (most) of her victories. The only nudity is in the opening scene. Now you think: ‘Okay, so it’s made with the 60s liberated woman in mind.’  Well, no. Barbarella is still exploited. The casual sex she has is rarely something she actively seeks; male characters offer and she accepts. Every challenge she faces creates an excuse to have some of her clothing come off. To top it all off, near the end of the movie, the villain puts her in a device that is supposed to orgasm her to death which she defeats by being more sexual than a killer sex machine can handle.  Seriously.

The people who like this movie often discuss it as a counterpoint to the more serious minded science fiction of the era.  A writer at Empire Magazine even called films like Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey stuffy by comparison. However, as far as I’m concerned, its only fun in the very 1970s definition of consequence free sex and pleather everything, neither of which have aged that well.

Would Recommend: If you are a production design aficionado.

Would Not Recommend: If you are a fan of traditional science fiction movies.