8 Women (2002)

Actually this is a very good comedy/farce about secrets in everyone's past romantic liaisons. I don't generally like comedy/farce but director Francois Ozon is so good at it I've softened on the genre. The song and dance scenes are hilarious... great fun. And, the story line is superb and perceptive about human frailty in the "battle of the sexes."The 4 rating is for trivializing the suicide of a father which is neither trivial nor funny if it has ever happened to you. Ozon has to take some responsibility for making light of one of the most painful and tragic events a child can ever suffer. Some things are just not funny and should be off limits in comedy. If you really think about it, there are many topics that are so sensitive and morally indisputable that they are never made light of in movies. Unfortunately, suicide is not one of them.

This is basically a "funny" version of Agatha Christie's "Mousetrap". It follows pretty much the same plot, but with a different ending and the play has a mixed cast, this is only women. In sum, it is witty, filled with typical French private jokes, which are understandable and feel international, although if you are French or are used to French movies, you'll probably enjoy and understand it better. I think that the acting wasn't appropriate for this movie, though. This directing would have worked brilliantly as a play, as it stands, it doesn't really deliver and the musical numbers are largely unnecessary. I'm giving it 6 stars because some actors do save the movie and make it an enjoyable piece, were it not for them, this movie would have completely failed.

8 Women is a lightweight, stylish and funny murder mystery. But forget the murder. The movie really is a terrific excuse to have several of France's greatest actresses strut their stuff. We might as well get the plot out of the way quickly. There's a snowed-in country home, elegant looking and filled with elegant women. A man is found dead and one of the women in the house killed him. Who and why? In addition to the male corpse, there's the corpse's wife, his mother-in-law, his two daughters, his sister, his sister-in-law, the chambermaid and the housekeeper. In order, they are Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Virginie Ledoyan and Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart and Firmine Richard. And as they tell us their stories, while the corpse stays chilled in an upstairs bedroom, they each sing French pop songs. It's all odd, funny and endearing. If they all look much like a selection of French bon bons, that's because the movie itself looks like a colorful candy box. Isabelle Huppert is one of my favorite actresses in any language, and it was good to see her play an amusing part for a change. I'm not sure how many other actresses of her caliber can glare and make it funny. Danielle Darrieux at 85 is a wonder. The sight of Fannie Ardant and Catherine Deneuve rolling around on the floor in a semi-Sapphic tussle was gripping. And those who want to have their illusions about tomboys shattered, just watch Sagnier as the youngest daughter here and then as the under-clothed bombshell she played the following year in Swimming Pool. Who is the killer? You won't find out from me, although that's scarcely the point of the movie. As Darrieux tells us in song, "There is no happy love." Still, murder can be a pleasure when it involves these eight actresses.

Strange film with amazing casting and the sign of a great director. Exploration of a delicate universe, fragile, dangerous, dark and egocentric, definition of woman and trial of feelings, gestures and illusions. Fruit of a play in which nuances are more important than colors, games of memories and intentions more relevant than reality, dreams and desires as cages of Bovaric scenes.French taste and sweet shadows in manner of Agatha Christie. Fragments of a ambiguous world and old fires in morning light. A murder, duties and fear, small sins as protective wall, the other as pray, fight with yourself and splendid collection of sentimental guns, traps, expectation and delicate hate. The essential advantage- the presence of woman's secrets in the skin of Ozon's art.A cruel, nostalgic and subtle film with seductive air of old melodramas, satirical traces and ash circles in snow.