POW!!! is the title given to the section of this year's programme looking at movies based on comic strip characters. Barbarella is a film I've seen a couple of times before, but never on the big screen, and I was intrigued to see what it would look like cinematically.
Set in a far distant future when peace and love rule over a unified universe, astronavigator Barbarella (Jane Fonda) is tasked with finding, and returning with, Durand-Durand, inventor of a new weapon, who is to be found in Sogo, City of Night, a place where evil and sin still thrive. Along the way she meets a host of weird characters, gets into and out of several dangerous situations, and into and out of a series of bizarre and skimpy costumes. Plus discovering the joys of love making done "the old fashioned way" (the "modern" method involving a couple of pills and connecting palms....). All on the way to a happy ending in which she saves the universe.
By any objective criteria this is trash. The sets and props couldn't look any less real if they'd been created by a ten year old out of Lego, and some of the performances are so over the top that you keep waiting for a audience to cry out "Behind you". Barbarella suffers several attacks that leave her bloodied and battered, only to reappear unscarred and unbruised ten minutes later. (I'm hoping this works for me the next time I cut my finger when chopping onions.)
So best to be totally subjective. The opening sequence, as the titles roll, sets the tone, with Fonda performing a zero gravity striptease out of a spacesuit that looks to be made of PVC and held together with velcro, and a bubblegum music track for accompaniment. It's funny, ridiculous and very sexy. Which pretty much sums up the entire film. The ice yacht, the leather men, the people of the rocks, the women imbibing 'essence of man' from a hookah. It's a psychedelic, trippy view of the world, a hippy fantasy that sparkles with colour and shapes and originality. The execution might be lacking at times, but some of the underlying ideas are minor works of genius.
Fonda's portrayal of our hero as wide eyed ingenue is the perfect foil to all the ludicrous goings on around her, and her mood moves between states of wonder, concern and ecstasy. The nearest she gets to expressing fear is "Oh my!". Revolving around her very physical presence are John Phillip Law's beautiful blue eyed angel, Pygar, a well of compassion and love; Milo O'Shea's wildly overacted Concierge; and the deep, playful, seductive tones of Anita Pallenberg as the Great Tyrant, queen of evil. A special mention should be reserved for David Hemmings, in a costume as scanty as any of Fonda's, redefining the boundaries of camp and incompetent as revolutionary leader Dildano (a name which is very much in keeping with the tone of the film). And who could fail to love a movie featuring Marcel Marceau?
Yes, it's rubbish. Yes, it's very much a male fantasy world. And yes, it's very much "off it's time". But suspend disbelief, embrace the silliness, and enjoy Fonda's performance. It is just fun, and there's no harm in that. POW indeed.
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