Barbarella

Saw Barbarella, a goofy, stupid, sexy little scifi/fantasy. It was very coy and cutesy in a leering 60s-ish sort of way. Barbarella, as an illustration of what I'm talking about, is gorgeously beautiful and lives in a post-war civilization, where love is the order of the day. Ah but in this future people only have sex by placing their palms together and letting drugs do the rest, so even though Barb is an amiable sex-bomb, she is also a virgin you see. It's a tad gross but it's also cute and stupid, like a fluffy little dog humping your leg. At any rate, it's not really for me.

For me this was a frustrating film. It's very imaginative and campy and glorious fun and I wanted to like it but I kept waiting for the endless exploitation of this one women to finish at last and for the male characters to get their turn! This of course never happens. I have nothing against soft-core porn mind you. I just wish there were more - featuring men. There is this attractive winged dude in Barbarella, which is nice, but he spends most of the film being some halfassed crypto-Christ figure. Not the most erotic of characters. The film mostly focuses on the lovely young Barb who spends most of her time changing costumes, being in mortal danger that invariably results in her clothing being stripped off. It's fun and naughty just not very inclusive. But that's the nature of the beast. I'm not surprised, just frustrated.