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Ozon (Under The Sand, Water Drops On Burning Rocks)
wanted to remake The Women, but when he found out
that Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts own the rights
to that classic bitchfest he searched instead for a property
with an all-female cast. 8 Femmes, a 1960s play by
Robert Thomas, comes close. There is a ninth, male,
character, but he’s not important in and of himself. Only
the fact of him matters in this murder/mystery/musical/comedy.
That’s a lot of genres, and Ozon & Co. were wise to go
very stagey with the sets, lighting, and wardrobe. When Gaby
(Deneuve) and oldest daughter Suzon (Ledoyen)
arrive at the family manse, they drive up to a house that
makes no effort to look like anything but a painted backdrop,
through the fakiest-looking snow ever. Really. A deer walks
through this stuff, leaving no discernible hoofprints. The
story is also set in the late 1950s—which allowed the costumer
to romp and play with garments that range from Sandra Dee-wear
to Audrey Hepburn-chic to Rita Hayworth-glamour to full-blown
Lana Turner—and the production is designed to recall movies
of that era. One of the immediate benefits to the viewer is
the contemplation of eight lovely women, most of them wearing
improbable clothes and looking like movie stars. So. Much.
Beauty. The only thing that’s missing is actual Technicolor.
Every sight and every sound is designed to be just a little
too much, just a shade over the top, but in that good, theater
way, if your theater happens to be melodrama.
When shocking turns of events occur, there are shots of women
huddled together, almost clutching each others’ hands, their
startled, lovely faces highlighted. When there’s danger, the
score provides wonderful “drama” music—deet deet deet DEEEEE!—just
in case you missed the point. When a crucial clue is about
to be identified… a shot rings out! 8 Women both spoofs
and respects murder mysteries by borrowing from such impeccable
sources as Murder By Death and Sherlock Holmes stories.
(Playwright Thomas was known and respected in the mystery
genre; he sold one of his other plays to Alfred Hitchcock,
who died before it could be filmed.)
So what’s it all about? Daughter Suzon returns from her English
school to the estrogen-laced air of home. She’s greeted by
her younger sister, Catherine (Sagnier), her viper-tongued
virginal aunt Augustine (Huppert), her malingering
grandmother Mamy (Darrieux), devoted housekeeper Madame
Chanel (Richard), and Louise (Beart), a new
and insubordinate chambermaid. Papa is upstairs, sleeping
in his room. After the usual family wrangling, Catherine goes
to wake him and finds him lying face-down in bed in a pool
of gore, the haft of a serious-looking knife protruding from
his back. The next surprise is the appearance of Pierrette
(Ardant), Papa’s disreputable sister, who has hiked
over through the “snow” in a pair of killer pumps, and who
immediately becomes the prime suspect. But Pierrette is not
the only femme harboring a secret and soon the walls of the
house can barely contain all the intrigue, suspicion, and
shocking revelations.
The blizzard and a severed phone cord leave the women cut
off from civilization and needing desperately to identify
the murderer in their midst. Led by Catherine, whose detecting
skills come from avid reading of mystery novels, these women
are just barely more competent than Inspector Clouseau. As
more and more about Papa’s last, fatal night comes to light,
each woman tells us what makes her tick by bursting into a
well-chosen, revelatory song (and sometimes dance). These
set pieces almost certainly are of Ozon’s invention rather
than the playwright’s, and they are well worth the gamble.
One wonders what went through the actresses’ minds when they
first read the scripts. If they had any reservations at all,
they do not show. Ozon must have earned their complete trust,
because there’s no tinge of gamely-going-along-with-a-brave-experiment
in anyone’s performance. That they act, sing their own songs,
and dance also hearkens back to the ’50s, the tail end of
the days when studios trained their stars to do it all.
On top of that, the dialogue is clever and the family interactions
are pretty damn funny. Of course there are flaws, particularly
where the plot concerns the mystery. If they drove in in this
snow, why can’t they drive out to the cops? Why can’t the
butcher deliver if the baker just drove by? Why don’t they
all just stay together in the same room? But 8 Women
is so uniformly charming that it feels churlish to linger
over questions like these. And oh, that catchy French pop!
—Roxanne Bogucka
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