Much like the lightweight tone that Alfred Hitchcock took with filming NORTH BY NORTHWEST after his very heavy-handed VERTIGO, Francois Ozon, a completely different film-maker who shot to international acclaim in 2000 with his introspective drama SOUS LE SABLE, decided to do a 180-degree turn and tackle a musical in the 1950's vein. 8 FEMMES begins with a montage of flowers seen up close and some very Mancini-like music in the opening credits announcing each and every one of the eight female leads, and recreates, inch by inch, a visual splendour that Douglas Sirk would have cheered. Fake snow, fake backdrops, a picturesque mansion, and the most harmless little deer this side of Bambi bring forth this atmosphere of shallow artifice, and this is only the beginning.
Immediately he moves into the house and introduces the players, women who are a part of a household, who dominate the scene with their very presence. Each one of them dressed in bold, distinctive colors, with diametrically opposed tempers to match, all gathering for a night of intrigue and catfights over the state of affairs of the man whom they are all related to -- Marcel -- who has apparently been killed by a knife in the back. As the day progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that all of them, including frail old Mamy who it seems is not an invalid and can walk quite well and Pierrette, Marcel's sister who lives nearby and enters the film in with a truck load of secrets beneath her cool facade, has a motive to have killed Marcel.
Agatha Christie's spirit channeled in a musical? You bet. And what a rollicking ride 8 FEMMES is! Garish and melodramatic, a product from the land of Technicolor, and boasting wacky performances that only get more complicated as things progress and layers of lies are peeled away. The cast is something concocted out of a fantasy of casting: there's Catherine Deneuve who plays Gaby, a catty snob, wife to Marcel and gets to utter a completely outrageous line to Isabelle Huppert who plays her sister Augustine: "I am rich and beautiful, while you are ugly and poor." Danielle Darrieux, a grand dame of movies since the Forties, is a hoot as Mamy, and there is a hysterical scene where after a confession to Huppert's character goes horribly crazy, Deneuve whacks her on the head with a glass carafe (or bottle?). Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier play daughters to Deneuve who may not have the same father; Emmanuelle Beart is Louise, the quintessential exaggeration of a French maid complete with a kissable pout, Firmine Richard plays the house maid who has her own secrets and is a dead ringer to Louise Beavers in essence. Then there's the outstanding Fanny Ardant, a more smoldering, sensual incarnation of Katharine Hepburn (and looking just like Hepburn circa 1949 when she made ADAM'S RIB), who enters the movie at the right time to get things really complicated and who later on has one of the best moments on film: a catfight with none other than Deneuve herself.
8 FEMMES is an excessive movie made for film buffs who know about excess in the form of color, campy performances, and who love watching female icons getting bitchy with each other. All of the performances have their moments of high and low, but Huppert not only takes the cake -- she grabs it, runs for the nearest exit, and gobbles it whole in one gluttonous gulp and she acts like she knows it. Deneuve is quite acidic in her role -- it's been light years since she's been "just the pretty ingénue" from the days of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. Older, with sharper features, and yet still regal and cool with a "what the hell" attitude. But above all of them there is Ozon, someone I was not aware of until recently, and whose films I'm enjoying the more I see them, bringing this time capsule as if he himself were impersonating Vincent Minnelli or Robert Wise himself. A perfect ooh-la-la of a movie.
Immediately he moves into the house and introduces the players, women who are a part of a household, who dominate the scene with their very presence. Each one of them dressed in bold, distinctive colors, with diametrically opposed tempers to match, all gathering for a night of intrigue and catfights over the state of affairs of the man whom they are all related to -- Marcel -- who has apparently been killed by a knife in the back. As the day progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that all of them, including frail old Mamy who it seems is not an invalid and can walk quite well and Pierrette, Marcel's sister who lives nearby and enters the film in with a truck load of secrets beneath her cool facade, has a motive to have killed Marcel.
Agatha Christie's spirit channeled in a musical? You bet. And what a rollicking ride 8 FEMMES is! Garish and melodramatic, a product from the land of Technicolor, and boasting wacky performances that only get more complicated as things progress and layers of lies are peeled away. The cast is something concocted out of a fantasy of casting: there's Catherine Deneuve who plays Gaby, a catty snob, wife to Marcel and gets to utter a completely outrageous line to Isabelle Huppert who plays her sister Augustine: "I am rich and beautiful, while you are ugly and poor." Danielle Darrieux, a grand dame of movies since the Forties, is a hoot as Mamy, and there is a hysterical scene where after a confession to Huppert's character goes horribly crazy, Deneuve whacks her on the head with a glass carafe (or bottle?). Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier play daughters to Deneuve who may not have the same father; Emmanuelle Beart is Louise, the quintessential exaggeration of a French maid complete with a kissable pout, Firmine Richard plays the house maid who has her own secrets and is a dead ringer to Louise Beavers in essence. Then there's the outstanding Fanny Ardant, a more smoldering, sensual incarnation of Katharine Hepburn (and looking just like Hepburn circa 1949 when she made ADAM'S RIB), who enters the movie at the right time to get things really complicated and who later on has one of the best moments on film: a catfight with none other than Deneuve herself.
8 FEMMES is an excessive movie made for film buffs who know about excess in the form of color, campy performances, and who love watching female icons getting bitchy with each other. All of the performances have their moments of high and low, but Huppert not only takes the cake -- she grabs it, runs for the nearest exit, and gobbles it whole in one gluttonous gulp and she acts like she knows it. Deneuve is quite acidic in her role -- it's been light years since she's been "just the pretty ingénue" from the days of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. Older, with sharper features, and yet still regal and cool with a "what the hell" attitude. But above all of them there is Ozon, someone I was not aware of until recently, and whose films I'm enjoying the more I see them, bringing this time capsule as if he himself were impersonating Vincent Minnelli or Robert Wise himself. A perfect ooh-la-la of a movie.