8 WOMEN (8 femmes)
Rating out of 4 stars: 2.5 Reviewed by Harvey Karten Focus Features Director: Francois Ozon Writer: Francois Ozon, Marina de Van Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Danielle Darrieux, Ludivine Sagnier, Firmine Richard Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 8/26/02
If you're the only man in a house of assertive women, you might almost welcome being murdered. Francois Ozon's genre- bending film which embraces elements as diverse as musical, comedy, soap opera, and detective story is a splash of fizz that works only sporadically. The unevenness of this feature is almost inevitable given the jumble of components which serve to parody all of the above, doing a job on the conventions of 1950's movies with their Technicolor saturation and melodramatic flourishes as well as on Agatha Christie.. The late Jacques Demy, whose "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" brought Catherine Deneuve's's name into the film world's attention, might have been a better choice to make this story given his success a many years back with his colorful musical, "The Young Girls of Rochefort."
"8 femmes" features some of the greats of French cinema, each given an opportunity to do her stuff with dance, song, and extravagant, comical flourishes. A theatrical work in that all the action takes place within one home (in fact the movie is based on a forgotten play written during the 1960's by Robert Thomas), "8 Women" is a "Gosford-Park"-like multi character mosaic, but this time the upstairs-downstairs motif is undercut by two maids who get to show that they are human beings with the same desires as their mistresses. Most or all of the household had been upstairs during the wee hours of one snowy day when the man of the dwelling, Marcel (Dominique Lamure), had apparently been stabbed in the back and left dead on his bed surrounding by pools of blood. Because of the inclement weather and the cut phone wires, the police cannot be called in, leaving the women themselves to figure out the guilty party. In so doing, each brings out her special hopes and fears to such an extent that we forget the various motives the women have for the murder in favor of their characteristic loneliness and assorted sexual proclivities conventional and otherwise.
The typical American theatergoer would probably be reminded of the musical dramas of Stephen Sondheim, who could integrate song and dance into the most horrific of historical events "Sweeney Todd," for example, the demon barber of fleet street. You'd be on the money if your memory brought up another film with an unconventional use of choreography, "Dance in the Dark," though a tragic picture with Brechtian overtones and little in the way of comic touches. Of the performers, Ludivine Sagnier stands out for her energy and her verve as the youngest member of the family, the clown who wants to be taken seriously; Fanny Ardent as the sophisticate, smoking cigarettes with a holder and slyly commenting on the naivete of those she considers beneath her; and best of all, Isabelle Huppert, as Augustine, the stereotypical old maid hidden beyond glasses and an unbecoming hair style who rebels against her virginity and transforms herself radically during the course of the day.
As director Ozon states, he "wanted to paint light and amusing reflections on femininity, actresses, class struggle and family secrets." He does all that but could have pared some of the talk and substituted more of the intriguing, unconventional choreography and song.
Rated R. Running time: 113 minutes. (C) 2002 by Harvey Karten, harveycritic@cs.com
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