BARBARELLA

France/Italy, 1968, 94 minutes, Colour.
Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Milo O'Shea, Anita Pallenberg, David Hemmings, Marcel Marceau, Ugo Tognazzi.
Directed by Roger Vadim.

Barbarella is based on a comic strip and the film is certainly like that and entertainingly so. It is also an excuse for Roger Vadim, Jane Fonda's then husband, to photographically exploit the physical beauty of Jane Fonda (as he had done previously in La Ronde and, especially, his version of Zola's The Game is over).

But, besides this, Barbarella is a very funny parody of a lot of science fiction, entertaining, witty at times, and much clever spoofing. It throws light on a lot of the devices and stock in trade of popular science fiction. It also pokes ribald fun at contemporary sexual preoccupations. Jane Fonda has to look ingenuous. Milo O'Shea and David Hemmings give good comic support

Entertaining science fiction.

1. The film was based on a comic strip character. Was this obvious? Was this just humorous, far-fetched science fiction or was there some point in the film?

2. How important were Roger Vadim's ideas on the importance of feminine physical and sexual beauty in this film? What, for instance, was the impression of Barbarella's space striptease during the credits?

3. Barbarella was an earth heroine. What comic strip heroic characteristics did she show - her driving the spacecraft, her knowledge, her mission from the earth President, her resourcefulness? How much of a twentieth century heroine was she?

4. How typical were her adventures, how humorous, how cruel? The crashes, the biting dolls, the labyrinth, Sogo, the sexual organ?

5. How was sex satirised in the psychological jargon of compatibility and the touching of hands, Barbarella's discovery of the real thing, the heated encounter with the leader of the revolution, Barbarella's exploding the organ?

6. What did Sogo represent - the symbol of evil, evil as its energising factor, the queen of Sogo, the style of life, the torture of the Angel, Durand Durand's cruelty and discovery of power?

7. What role did the labyrinth play? The professor?

8. What was the significance of Pygar, the blind angel? What did he symbolise? His sexual experience revitalised him, is this part of Vadim's point about sex?

9. Did you enjoy the flight to Sogo and Barbarella's shooting down the rockets? What was this satirising?

10. How was Durand Durand a satire on the mad, obsessed scientist?

11. How was the revolution satirised in its leader's ineptitude?

12. Why was Barbarella rescued with the Queen of Sogo?

13. What role does science-fiction play for human imagination? What is the role of such a fantasy as Barbarella? Does it satisfy the imagination, show its inventiveness, satirise the imagination?

14. How was the whole film, in its comedy and parody situations and the deliberate pathos of much of the dialogue, a satire of modern human behaviour and attitudes?