Je--e - Barbie -dir. By John Buchanan- -

John Buchanan has done the impossible: he has made the plastic cry. And you will feel guilty for watching.

Buchanan cuts from this discovery to a real archival clip of a 1960s Mattel factory—women with hairnets assembling thousands of identical smiles. The implication is devastating: Barbie isn't a woman. She is a product that dreamed it was a woman. It would be remiss not to mention the audience walkouts. At my screening, a group of women wearing "Barbie Est. 1959" t-shirts left during the third-act monologue where Unit 01 confronts a giant, floating Sindy doll (voiced by Tilda Swinton). The Sindy whispers: "You are the tapeworm of the toy box. You ate joy and shat out consumerism." Je--e - Barbie -Dir. by John Buchanan-

There is a moment exactly 47 minutes into John Buchanan’s controversial new film Jeune / Barbie where the title character—played with vacant terror by newcomer Mia Harlow—stares into a funhouse mirror at a Malibu beach party. She doesn’t see her iconic ponytail or her arched feet. She sees a void shaped like a woman. John Buchanan has done the impossible: he has

The crack is the film’s central metaphor. Through it, we see the pink foam interior of her construction. We see the wires. We see the suffocation. The implication is devastating: Barbie isn't a woman

April 17, 2026