THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
We have rarely been so impatient for a film to be released in theaters. Not that we were expecting it (although a little, by force), but because the advertising campaign around Barbie bordered on harassment. So it had to end. Under the tons of derivative products and extracts, it is however a small sentence which remains in mind, dropped discreetly by the agent of Greta Gerwig, the director, and which did not bode well: “Her ambition is to become not the greatest female director, but a great studio director. »
A project like Barbie can only be a culmination for the one who, after a career as an actress in independent cinema and only two productions (lady birdin 2017, The Daughters of Doctor March, in 2019), was entrusted by Warner with the controls of a 100 million dollar blockbuster. It took Gerwig a year of reflection before she accepted, most certainly sensing the Faustian pact she was about to sign.
After an incipit borrowed from 2001, a space odyssey (1968), by Stanley Kubrick, the film immerses us in the world of Barbie Land, a little bubble of candy pink perfection in which Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) wakes up, living the same sunny day every day, in a setting of painted canvases, where only good humor and permanent leisure are tolerated – a Truman Show girly version.
Existential crisis
Any former user of the doll, and of her boyfriend Ken, can only be taken in by this set-up, where it is a question of exploring a familiar universe whose facticity is an inexhaustible source of gags: Barbie savors an empty cup of coffee, takes a shower without water, her feet are naturally arched… Every day, she finds her friends on the beach, every evening, we party. In the Capitol, in the courts and in the hospitals, the Barbies reign over Barbie Land, the best of all feminist worlds.
But one evening, on the dancefloor, Barbie thinks of death. The next day, a series of hiccups taints the regularity of daily life, and the beginning of an existential crisis – and cellulite – comes to the fore. Barbie must urgently go to the Real World, in search of her tormented owner who would be the cause of this derangement. There, in California, the doll discovers for the first time the generalized sexism in all strata of society, the reproving opinion of the new generation who accuses her of being the face of a “sexualized capitalism” and the hypocrisy of the CEO of Mattel (the brilliant Will Ferrell), who would like to see her resume, made her way to Barbie Land.
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