film

Released in 1968, Barbarella stars Jane Fonda as the titular space traveller who is sent across the galaxy to find the missing scientist Durand-Durand, whose mysterious positronic ray threatens civilisation. Adapted from Jean-Claude Forest’s French comic, Roger Vadim’s film is far more interested in creating a kaleidoscopic world of sexual liberation, extravagant costumes and pop-art spectacle than in coherent sci-fi storytelling, and succeeds utterly on those terms.

Fonda has a series of increasingly bizarre encounters, from telepathic revolutionaries and murderous dolls to the infamous Orgasmatron, while Vadim piles on the sets, colours and visual surrealism. The film’s campy eroticism feels both playfully liberated and unmistakably shaped by the male gaze, but its visual imagination is irresistible, and Ennio Morricone’s suitably strange score adds even more to the sense of cosmic kitsch.