"Feminist doll", "drowned in product placement": Barbie sometimes seduces, questions a lot

It is the conclusion of several weeks of a pink wave that will have won over the whole world. Barbie, the third feature film by director Greta Gerwig, a figure of indie and feminist cinema in the United States, is released in theaters after intense promotional hype. Posters everywhere, even on the tables of Parisian cafes, photographic filters generated by artificial intelligence, promotional marathon of the casting always in pink, even in Barbie outfit... The Barbie craze, with the backing of huge marketing budgets, has taken hold public.

Co-produced by its actress, Margot Robbie, Warner Bros and Mattel, the company that markets the dolls, the film has the barely concealed objective of making desirable the sexagenarian doll with unrealistic proportions, which has become a symbol of the contradictory injunctions that weigh on women. . And therefore, to be nothing but a vast $100 million marketing operation. It is in this context that the French press - it should be noted that some of the press titles, including Liberation, Télérama and Les Cahiers du Cinéma were not invited to preview screenings - were able to discover the odyssey of the peroxide doll outside Barbieland, a little paradise with the tunes of the world of The Truman Show, to discover real life and the horrors of the patriarchy. Has Greta Gerwig managed to repaint the most emblematic toy of gender inequality into a feminist object?

The bet is successful for our critic, Etienne Sorin, who salutes “the talent of the filmmaker” and “the jubilant humor” which she shows in her film to “settle accounts with the patriarchy”. Despite great successes, Barbie remains a vast advertising watchdog. This is, however, a “tour de force” which capitalism has known how to demonstrate “since its birth”. The operation consists in “appropriating his criticism and transforming it into merchandise or entertainment”. In this respect, the Barbie communication operation is a success.

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"We did not expect Barbie as the allegorical sequel to Daughters of Doctor March (another feature film by Greta Gerwig, released in 2019)", greets Liberation. If Barbie and her subject are definitely not subversive (“Must not push”, writes the daily), the feature film asserts itself as an object at the crossroads, both fascinating and alienated. “Barbie captivates for everything that poses a problem for her, all the contradictions that such an object releases, at the crossroads of the specifications and the author’s license”, deciphers the journalist Sandra Onana.

"Alas, the real irony is that whatever he says, he will sell a plethora of derivative products," adds L'Obs. The magazine is nonetheless won over by the subtlety of the American's feature film, whose marketing suggested that it could be a children's film. "Gerwig has the courage to use a blockbuster as a platform to hammer out feminist messages," writes the magazine.

Less critical, Le Parisien praises the merits of a “popcorn” film that we will “probably quickly forget”. A pleasure which should not be deprived, however, as the universe of Mattel, joyfully regressive and a bit consoling, the performance as an actor by Ryan Gosling (interpreter of Ken) and the feminist questions of the film make it the blockbuster of the 'summer. "We laugh a lot, which allows us to convey - peacefully - the two main themes of the film: defense of feminism and questioning of patriarchy", specifies the daily.

The sauce does not take for La Croix, tempted to "pass its turn" in the face of the delirious communication operation organized around the film. All for a report that the Catholic newspaper considers very ambivalent: "In the midst of glitter, this biting comedy questions both the standards of virility, the condition of women, and ultimately serves the giants it criticizes." Same observation in Le Monde, bitter after watching the doll “drowned in kistch derision”. According to the journalist, it is palpable when watching the film that the screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, her companion, anticipate in each shot the criticisms that may be leveled at their film. “The copy smacks of the result of brainstorming to exploit the slightest bit of irony. Enough to fix the brand, which can now boast of mastering the subtleties of self-mockery, ”she stings. The result is a commercial object overloaded with ironic details and devoid, it seems, of any real artistic freedom.