8 femmes (Eight Women)
Directed by François Ozon
In an opulent alpine mansion, seven women and a man are gathered for a family reunion. But soon the man is dead, knifed in the back, and the seven — make that eight — women are left to fight out, Agatha Christie-style, who is the most likely culprit. But it seems they all have a motive (of course) and all have something, usually many things to hide. And so their secrets are revealed in the course of their ensuing investigations of one another, old bitternesses emerging and new bitternesses being created in a whodunnit spiced with music, comedy and a little light pathos.
Eight Women (or 8 Femmes) unites a great many female stars of the French screen, some for the first time, and some not, e.g. the film sees Danielle Darrieux play Catherine Deneuve’s mother for no less than the third time. Most of the cast shines, and, though they are caricatures, larger than life in their roles, they are not offensively so, and the concept of a musical murder mystery is not over-done — the great bulk of it is straight talking. The tunes are mostly catchy, too, and some are potentially moving. A great deal of character revelation and interaction takes place here, and, while this held some interest and was played well, 8 Femmes’ characters sometimes reveal histories of betrayal and intrigue so baroque that it is a little clichéd and irritating even though obviously deliberate here, and probably necessary too for the development of the film’s central themes. I have impatience with “cute” films, and am usually disappointed when a feature that is either foreign or Australian falls into this predictable mould.
Eight Women had not a little of the cute, and not a little cheap sentiment trying to be genuine pathos, and this was annoying though didn’t ruin the film; for it isn’t hard to make even a “silly” whodunnit that keeps the audience pretty awake; and the originality, too, of 8 Femmes was strongly in its favour and probably this and the rich characterization carried the film.
I was ultimately convinced that this was a fair work and probably would be enjoyed by a large number of people particularly those who are more tolerant with respect to the “cutesy” than myself.
Matthew Harvey
