Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 19, 2005 | | Summary | Rather carelessly produced DVD | Content
 | It's a bare bones package with burned on English subs and an inconsiderately placed trailer for "Possession." This is quite a nice little movie that deserves better - certainly better than getting slapped with an "R" rating for being foreign. Yeah, the MPAA says it's for "some sexual content," but the content in question is pretty tame compared to what you can see on Lifetime. Let's face it, the MPAA has been dumping "R"s on anything from another country that affords even the slightest pretext for years now. A Hollywood film of equal strength would be barely flirting with a "PG-13" - and even that is a pretty prudish rating for something this innocuous. This happens all the time, and I don't know why foreign producers aren't howling about it.
If the DVD had been better I would have given this a higher rating.
I have seen a handful of Ozon's films, and while I wouldn't say any of them were outright bad, I had never found any of them to be really satisfying. "8 Women," however, is supremely satisfying. Of course, it would be hard to go wrong with the dream cast we have here, but Ozon also seems perfectly in control of the material for once. This movie is like going through a box of bonbons. It's colorful, stylish and full of delicious performances - not at all nutritious, but who cares. I can already see a Hollywood remake. Instead of this rich and tasty treat we will get the movie equivalent of a Twinkie - cellophane wrapped garbage full of air and preservatives. The usual. Yuck.
I would hesitate to call this a musical. The musical numbers are pretty modest affairs that recall to some extent the genre experiments of Jaques Demy. It is a feather-light comedy modeled on drawing-room murder mysteries. The only man in the picture is a corpse in an isolated house, and the titular "8 women" are all suspects. Naturally, the family closet will pour forth a tide of bones. There is even a good old-fashioned nighttime soap style catfight - guess who!
I had reservations about this director, but in "8 Women" Ozon manages to give us a guilty pleasure with none of the guilt and twice the pleasure. Well done!
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| Rating | | | Date | August 18, 2005 | | Summary | J'adore 8 Femmes! | Content
| I loved this movie, but I will say it is not for everyone, it has an aquired taste, but the cast is fantastic and the satire is good as well. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | Mayhem, and eight women.... | Content
| It is the late 1950's. You see a beautiful country house, and a lot of snow. Inside, there is a man and seven women. The man is Marcel (Dominique Lamure), the owner of the house, who is sleeping in his bedroom. The women are his wife Gaby (Catherine Deneuve), his daughters Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier) and Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen), his eccentric mother-in-law (Danielle Darrieux), his somewhat neurotic sister-in-law Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), his housekeeper Chanel (Firmine Richard) and Louise (Emmanuelle BĂ©art), a remarkably attractive maid. Seven women, and one man, who unfortunately turns up dead some minutes after the film begins. Should I clarify that he has been assassinated?.
A late addition to that ensemble is Pierrete (Fanny Ardent), Marcel's estranged sister, who drops in uninvited at the house just when mayhem has erupted after the discovery of Marcel's dead body. VoilĂ : now you have the eight women of the title :)
These are very different women who don't like each other a lot, and that is a recipe for trouble in my book. However, there is another factor that I haven't mentioned so far, and that makes things quite more interesting: one of them murdered Marcel during the night. Eight women, unable to leave the house due to a snowstorm, and a task: weeding out a murderer. Finding the culprit will be a difficult task, because all these women lie, for one reason or the other...
"8 women" immerses the spectator in a classic murder mistery, spiced by eight songs that fit perfectly into the script, and that allow us to understand better the motivations of the characters. Director François Ozon managed to make an original and visually stunning film, that manages to surprise and please despite a not overly good ending.
On the whole, I think that you will like "8 women", unless you absolutely hate films with songs as part of the script. I'm certainly not a fan of musicals, but I really liked this movie.
Belen Alcat
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| Rating | | | Date | March 27, 2005 | | Summary | Highly Entertaining and Original Film | Content
| This is one of the most enjoyable films I've seen in years. Francois Ozon is the best new director to emerge from France in the past decade, most of his films are considerably darker than this mystery/musical but he shifts gears beautifully (the movie does have a whiff of the comic decadence that is the Ozon trademark.) The movie is beautifully photographed with a glossy look that evokes the American Technicolor films of the 1950's (especially the candy-colored films of Universal from the era such as Douglas Sirk's soap operas.) The movie is in fact set in the 1950's although this point is not stressed. The whole cast is wonderful and for the most part, sing great. I've played many of the song tracks again and again. Ludvine Sagner as a great French teen rock-n-roll number, Frimine Richard sings a very moving ballad, and French film legend Danielle Darrieux (a movie star for over 70 years!!) closes the film with a poignant number. Catherine Deneuve may not be much of a singer but she is still a gorgeous screen presence in her late fifties and recalls Lana Turner here in her chic matron period (although Lana was almost 20 years younger during this stint than Catherine is now!!) I do want to add though my copy of this DVD does not come equipped to turn the English subtitles off as others have also stated. I frankly much prefer EIGHT WOMEN to the recent American film musicals that have made a splash, it's a love letter to eight outstanding French actresses. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 06, 2005 | | Summary | 8 BEAUTIFUL WOMEN | Content
| During a snowstorm, eight women are stranded in a French country home with the corpse of the murdered family patriarch. Slightly bizarre, low-key French film pokes fun at the comedy murder mystery genre while heralding the feminine mystique of domesticity and dominance. It has the added distinction of breaking into song from each of the eight principal players, a strangely satisfying technique that often delivers touching portraits of womankind. This is as intoxicating as a glass of fine French wine. |
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