Summary:

The scene is a French country manor sometime in the 1950’s as Gaby (Catherine Deneuve) returns home after picking up her oldest daughter Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) from the train station on the occasion of the girl’s Christmas visit home from college. Shortly after their arrival, younger daughter Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier) discovers that her father has been murdered in his sleep. This triggers an exchange of secrets and intrigues that leads to the identity of the perpetrator of these events.

Steve says:

8 WOMEN is the gol-durndest movie you ever saw; or more accurately, that you never saw, for the odds are you won’t be seeing this one. First, it is receiving an art-house release, meaning very limited distribution; and second, it is French. Okay, I’m being tough on the French. In truth, I love their films. Well, I used to anyway. The films of the French New Wave by such geniuses as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffault helped define my taste in movies. Okay, there was also Russ Meyer (BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS) but we’ll save him for another review. Now where was I? Oh yes, the French New Wave. Well, that’s pretty much dead now. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at 8 WOMEN.

Writer/director François Ozon tries to send-up two genres at once: the drawing room murder mystery and the 50’s Hollywood musical. The result is a twisted hybrid that defies description. Satire is tough enough to pull off, particularly in any form longer than a sketch. But Ozon complicates the process by skewering too many targets at once and comes up empty on all counts.

8 WOMEN has already been running for several months in its native country and is reportedly a box-office smash there. This confounds all logic until one remembers that France is the country that has practically deified Jerry Lewis.

The film’s art direction and costuming lean heavily on the influences of the three-color Technicolor 50’s films of Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli with clothing and set décor done in brilliant flashy hues.

The characters all break out in song at the drop of a music cue and everyone pauses to admire the performances of those singing -- even if they aren’t very good at it. To be sure, we are not meant to take these proceedings seriously, but our credulity is nevertheless strained worse then Anna Nicole Smith’s jogging bra. Poor Catherine Deneuve has trouble concealing her embarrassment when it comes time for her to belt out her ditty. (Each character in the film gets her own song). She is also called upon to hike up her skirts and stomp around in a dance style reminiscent of a crazed exterminator in hot pursuit of some pesky cockroaches.

Before moving on, a word about Deneuve. At nearly fifty-nine years of age, she is still drop-dead gorgeous. She and Sophia Loren are at the top of the my very short list of geriatric movie hotties. Watching Deneuve on screen is a treat, easily elevating the level of whatever material she attempts and thus gaining some advances for 8 WOMEN on our kernel rating scale.

Also easy on the eyes is the stunning Emmanuelle Béart (MISSION IMPOSSIBLE), who combines jaw-dropping beauty with better than average acting skills. Béart plays the family’s cheeky maid, who harbors a few secrets of her own.

Fanny Ardant shows up midway through the proceedings as the sister of the philandering murder victim and we soon learn that she has as much of an eye for the ladies as her late brother. But her Sapphic turn with Deneuve doesn’t even begin to generate the kind of steam that lá Deneuve did with Susan Sarandon in that unforgettable scene in THE HUNGER. (If you haven’t seen it, rent it. I’ll say no more).

8 WOMEN is very loosely based on a 1960’s French crime play titled 8 FEMMES and its stage-bound roots stick out all over the place in the claustrophobic nature of its narrative.

If you’re looking for a real film curiosity, then 8 WOMEN is your cup of Earl Grey. Otherwise, this one is completely skipable.

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Patty says:

Steve’s primary problem is that he expects everybody in a French film to run around naked. These are 8 CLOTHED WOMEN.

I had difficulty suspending my belief in reality far enough to get engaged in this film. The genre-bashing 8 WOMEN takes a stab at the parlor murder mystery while throwing in a bit of class distinction, sexual tension between the women characters and Dysfunctional Family Dynamics 101 to flavor the mix. Then Ozon sets it all to music, adds a dash of choreography and costumes the characters like Fanny Brice on acid. It was cute. So is my granddaughter when she bangs on my baking pans with a spoon, but I don’t want to be subjected to it for two friggin’ hours. That was much my reaction to this film. I should stop now.

But I won’t.

There was some outstanding acting by the cast. Deneuve is a very poised, beautiful woman. She was game to take this part, and I can’t imagine anything short of an adequate script, better directing and editing that could improve her performance.

Pouty-lipped, come-do-me-eyed, Emmanuelle Béart, was at her heart-throbbing (or in Steve’s case, crotch-throbbing) best. She has to rank among the ten most natural beauties in the world. She steals every scene she’s in by showing up. The performance of Fanny Ardant as the sister of the deceased was nothing short of spectacular. She has the bad girl thing honed to a fine art.

I know I’m going to get e-mail chastising me for not being sophisticated enough to “get” this film. So be it. I don’t claim to be a film aficionado. What you get from me, in contrast to Steve’s film savvy, is how a film will play in Fargo. This one won’t play in the fly-over states unless you’re watching it on an LA-to-London, Air France flight. I didn’t get it. I don’t think the other reviewers in the screening got it either, given their affective stoicism. Of course, to be cool, they’ll have to say they got it, in which case, as they say in Fargo, “Tu es completement debile.”

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