8 Women
***/****
starring Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart
screenplay by François Ozon, Marina de Van, based on the play by Robert Thomas
directed by François Ozon
by Bill Chambers Almost every French actress I can rhyme off without help from the audience is in the cast of François Ozon's 8 Femmes, a delightfully odd murder mystery with song-and-dance interludes. (Imagine if John Waters had directed Clue.) The film takes place during Christmastime in 1950s France at a country manor where various women have gathered to celebrate the holidays with Marcel, the only significant man in any of their lives. But Marcel has been stabbed in the back (literally), and a snowdrift outside leaves the eight femmes of the title stranded together with nothing to do other than accuse each other of his murder. Was it Marcel's loveless wife (Catherine Deneuve)? One of his off-kilter daughters (Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier)? Marcel's "ugly" sister-in-law (Isabelle Huppert, in horn-rimmed glasses) or his patently dishonest mother-in-law (Danielle Darrieux)? His promiscuous sister by blood (Fanny Ardant)? Or did the butler--rather, either of the two maidservants (Firmine Richard and Emmanuelle Béart)--do it? With a plot that strikes as stream-of-consciousness and musical numbers that do, too, 8 Femmes indicates little desire to change the world, but it works as a frothy, hyper-theatrical experience. Compounding the amusement are the sparse, candy-coloured sets--which bring to mind Gold Key comics from yesteryear--and watching so many famously sedate performers let their hair down; one can't imagine the Meg Ryan remake of The Women, in lieu of which this film was made (and, like 8 Femmes, planned to feature an exclusively female cast), being half as much fun. PROGRAM: Special Presentations
