8 Women [8 Femmes]

Release Date: 26/12/2002
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen
Directed by: Francois Ozon

REVIEW: At an isolated mansion in the snowy countryside of 1950s France, a family is gathered for the holiday season, but there will be no celebration - their beloved patriarch has been murdered! The killer can only be one of the eight women closest to the man of the house. Was it his powerful wife, his spinster sister-in-law, his miserly mother-in-law? Maybe the insolent chambermaid or the loyal housekeeper? Could it possibly have been one of his two daughters? A surprise visit from the victim's chic sister sends the household into a tizzy, encouraging hysterics, exacerbating rivalries and encompassing musical interludes. Comic situations arise with the revelations of dark family secrets. Seduction dances with betrayal. The mystery of the female psyche is revealed. Eight women. Each is a suspect, each has a motive, and each has a secret. One of them is guilty.

Agatha Christie meets Moulin Rouge? Only those wickedly audacious French and an equally audacious director like Francois Ozon can get away with this scintillating combination. To put it simply: there is no movie quite like "8 Women". It is, unquestionably, the most original and hypnotic film of the year, a completely absurdist approach to a specific genre, with an all-female cast of sublime French actresses at their best. They sing, they dance, they connive, they snipe, they bite and they seduce, and that is only the beginning. A visually alluring and intoxicating musical melodrama, "8 Women" is as much a comment on the artifice of cinema and theatre, as it is a conventional whodunit. Though, as it becomes clear, Ozon's breathtaking masterpiece ends up being far less about murder, and far more about the hilarities and secrets of families, women in particular. The psychology of womanhood is as thematically rich here, as its murderous subplot, which only serves as a device to explore the collective psyches of this female menagerie.

The music serves as an enhanced character device, though one suspects that as the film goes out of its way to break convention, some audiences may find that approach off-putting. The physicality of the film is as glorious as its stylized approach to narrative. Ozon's use of colour and design to further to exemplify setting and character is sublime, and the film's performances are collectively magnificent. At almost 60, Catherine Deneuve is still glowing, beautiful and a movie star in every sense of the word, but it is Isabelle Huppert who effortlessly steals the film as the dour, consistently complaining sister. Stripped of make up and unrecognisable, Huppert perfectly captures the tragic spinster, and does with comic verve.

"8 Women" is elegant cinema at its finest, a perfect soufflé that never goes flat, and remains a deliciously scintillating and original entertainment.


- Paul Fischer