8 Women (2001)
(Huit femmes)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 111m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, Firmine Richard
Synopsis:
Female members of a well-to-do family and household gather for Christmas and find themselves stranded in the house with a dead patriarch upstairs.
Review:
Ozon assembles a cast of national beauties of the last six decades to translate this theatre piece to the screen and throws in a few archly choreographed songs spanning a similar period but with newly penned lyrics. Unsure whether one is witnessing a pastiche of Sirk, Hitchcock/Herrmann or Demy, or simply a postmodern entertainment par excellence, one remains transfixed and constantly surprised as the initially genteel ladies are severally stripped of their masks and outed in all their viciousness. That the film achieves this without once making one root for any of them says something of the talent at work.
(Huit femmes)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 111m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, Firmine Richard
Synopsis:
Female members of a well-to-do family and household gather for Christmas and find themselves stranded in the house with a dead patriarch upstairs.
Review:
Ozon assembles a cast of national beauties of the last six decades to translate this theatre piece to the screen and throws in a few archly choreographed songs spanning a similar period but with newly penned lyrics. Unsure whether one is witnessing a pastiche of Sirk, Hitchcock/Herrmann or Demy, or simply a postmodern entertainment par excellence, one remains transfixed and constantly surprised as the initially genteel ladies are severally stripped of their masks and outed in all their viciousness. That the film achieves this without once making one root for any of them says something of the talent at work.
(Huit femmes)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 111m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, Firmine Richard
Synopsis:
Female members of a well-to-do family and household gather for Christmas and find themselves stranded in the house with a dead patriarch upstairs.
Review:
Ozon assembles a cast of national beauties of the last six decades to translate this theatre piece to the screen and throws in a few archly choreographed songs spanning a similar period but with newly penned lyrics. Unsure whether one is witnessing a pastiche of Sirk, Hitchcock/Herrmann or Demy, or simply a postmodern entertainment par excellence, one remains transfixed and constantly surprised as the initially genteel ladies are severally stripped of their masks and outed in all their viciousness. That the film achieves this without once making one root for any of them says something of the talent at work.