n the 41st century, the president of Earth asks "five-star double rated
astronautical aviatrix" Barbarella (Fonda) to find missing scientist Duran
Duran. Duran is the inventor of the positronic ray, the most powerful weapon in a
pacified universe. If Barbarella fails, it could mean the return of war.
In her shag-carpeted spaceship of love, Barbarella crash-lands on Planet
16 of the Tau Seti system, and is immediately set upon by cruel children and man-eating
dolls. They shred her fishnet stockings before she's rescued by Mark Hand
(Ugo Tognazzi). Barbarella rewards Hand by making love with him--but not
with a pill. The old-fashioned way.
Later, dressed in a feather boa and plastic Nancy Sinatra boots,
Barbarella decides she likes that kind of love-making so much that she does
it again with the next person she meets. He's a blind angel named Pygar
(Law), whom she encounters in the Labyrinth of Night after crashing her
spaceship a second time.
Afterward, Professor Ping (the great mime Marcel Marceau, who actually
speaks in this film) explains that she must go to the corrupt city of Sogo.
Flying to Sogo, Pygar and Barbarella engage in a pitched dogfight
with the Great Tyrant's Black Guards before crashing yet again.
In Sogo Barbarella encounters a city filled with extras from Laugh-In, dressed
in vintage French S&M drag. She meets the Great Tyrant (Pallenberg), who's
dressed in Paco Rabanne and has a big horn in her head. The tyrant abducts
Pygar.
Barbarella is attacked by killer budgies, then sucked underground by
Dildano (David Hemmings), the head of the resistance. They have sex--but
not the old-fashioned way. With a pill. Barbarella changes again, this time
into black lame with a plastic breast cup.
The tyrant's Concierge (O'Shea) captures Barbarella and puts her
in his Excessive Machine, a kind of lethal orgasmatron. But she proves too
much for the machine, causing it to burst into flames. That's when
Barbarella recognizes that the Concierge is actually the missing Duran
Duran.
He imprisons her with the Queen of the Night and makes plans to take
over the throne and destroy the Labyrinth with the positronic ray. Can
Barbarella escape before Duran Duran prevails?
"I better adjust my tongue box."
Based on a French comic, 1968's Barbarella was directed by Roger
Vadim (And God Created Woman), who's best known in this country as
Jane Fonda's first husband. It also marks the one role Fonda--who went on
to become an Oscar-winning actress, antiwar activist and fitness
guru--would most like to forget. San Francisco Chronicle critic Edward
Guthman reports that, at the height of her political activism, Fonda was
asked: "Where was your head at when you made Barbarella?" She
replied: "I don't know--up my armpit, I guess. We all make mistakes. In my
case, I keep getting my nose rubbed in them."
Fonda's misgivings notwithstanding, Barbarella is a frothy period
piece of raunchy Eurotrash SF camp that, like other seminal SF works, has
had influence disproportionate to its modest ambitions. From fashion
runways to pop music--the 1980s band Duran Duran infamously took its name
from Milo O'Shea's character--Barbarella has become a touchstone of
late 1960s grooviness. Luc Besson's 1997 The Fifth Element is the SF
film that owes most to Barbarella's Weltanschauung. But bits
and pieces of it turn up in films from Demolition Man to Austin
Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Which is not to suggest that Barbarella is anything but a
supremely silly movie. The film's theme is that love conquers all (although in this case, it's
pre-AIDS, do-your-own-thing love).
Technically, the movie's outrageous production design is offset by
rudimentary special effects, especially considering that it came out the
same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey. But SF isn't really the point.
Sex is. Indeed, the most impressive effect is pre-Hanoi Jane's own
cantilevered architecture and her array of Carnaby Street-meets-Star Trek
outfits. As for her performance, Fonda's spacey line readings make
Barbarella seem curiously innocent--or brain damaged.
