Known for their moody, auteur achievements like The Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha, respectively, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig are rolling out Barbie for a 2023 release. Leaked script pages reveal that their forthcoming film collaboration stays within their understated, intimate, mumblecore cinematic stylings.
- Barbie stares out her Park Slope brownstone window, sipping a chablis in a grey cardigan, monologuing about how sex is but a temporary aperture through which to witness the totality of human pain. Ken calls his estranged son from a previous marriage. He didn’t get tenure.
- The opening credit sequence is a series of thematic shots depicting how, actually, all homes are merely toy dollhouses that we as brief blips of the human species “play” in.
- Skipper, Barbie’s rebellious and sporty younger brunette sister, has moved in with her for the winter following a stint in rehab.
- Ken sleeps with Teresa, Barbie’s best friend, in his oaken basement study during a dinner party the couple has thrown to celebrate Barbie’s recent promotion to astronaut-lawyer-supermodel-lifeguard.
- Barbie sees Antonioni’s Le Amiche by herself at a revival house and forgets to pick her daughter Cricket up from preschool.
- The motif of “dress-up” is examined through montages of Barbie and Ken’s morning routines trying on and discarding multiple outfits. Even nude, we are wearing ideological “costumes” for our partners and—perhaps most importantly—ourselves.
- Barbie takes a melancholy, rainy weekend road trip to her hometown by herself. Disappointed by the discovery of her elderly father’s recent descent into compulsive decluttering, she sits alone at a dive bar and learns about the handsome bartender’s own life challenges. She eventually follows him into the bathroom and starts boozily making out with him, only to discover in horror that something must be very, very wrong with him—his genital area is…not…completely smooth and flat.
- Skipper’s recovery is put to the test when she unexpectedly reunites with her tumultuous first love, Devin the Mattel Dolphin Magic™ employee. She hopes a second try will be worth it, but repeatedly flashes back to when he ignored her addictions and put the dolphins (and their respective magic) first.
- While regretful of their one-night affair, Ken and Teresa are certain that Barbie will never know what happened at the dinner party. But, a worn copy of Gravity’s Rainbow that tumbled from the bookshelf during their tryst dares to give their secret away, as Barbie discovers it on the floor the next morning. She knows that her husband permanently swore off ever picking up or reading Pynchon again after a 1998 conference panel controversy.
- Pay attention to any and all appearances made by clear plastic backpacks onscreen. They are an important symbol of womanhood, baggage, expectations, and the transparency of neoliberalism.
- Ken, Skipper, Barbie, and Teresa all stare blankly ahead at a piece in the photography exhibit at their local museum. A historic photo from the wreckage of Chernobyl sits in front of them, wherein under the pictured rubble lies the faint outline of a child’s abandoned doll trapped under a fallen ceiling. Sia’s extra-slow cover of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” in a minor key plays as we pan out and credits roll.
Liz Arcury 