8 Women (2002)
As someone with no interest in being heterosexual, sometimes I just look at a movie poster and think "that's definitely going to be gay". Such was the case with the French 2002 black comedy musical murder mystery 8 Women (or 8 Femmes, obviously in its original French). It's a special extra sense you get in the LGBT+ community - an ability to detect content from a mile off. From the opening of the movie, it was as if I was being specifically catered to: the 50s high femme aesthetic, pastel colour scheme, great lipstick, commitment to saucy plot twists and lighthearted approach to murder mystery felt like a blend of Clue with everything I would want in a movie.
Pandering to me aside, this movie has a lot going for it. It was written and directed by François Ozon as an adaptation of the 1958 play by Robert Thomas, and recreates that theatrical vibe effortlessly with its singular setting and small scale drama but never feels claustrophobic. Most critics write about the wonderful use of pastiche in Ozon's integration of the actresses' prior works, but I'm a little baby in the film world and am only familiar with, of course, Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve. I don't doubt this point, but I don't think it's integral to enjoyment of the movie. Most important is your tolerance for musicals, of which this was quite a tame one.
The strength of this movie lies predominantly with its cast. As it revolves around a group of the titular eight women trying to work out who amongst them is the murderer of the family patriach, there's going to be something for everyone. I was particularly enamored with the openly bisexual femme fatale Pierette played by Fanny Ardant, but Isabelle Huppert's Augustine was also phenomenal in her spinster spiral and Catherine Deneuve as the wife of the deceased was perfectly tightly wound and look, literally everyone in this movie was great.
Less great? I mean, I guess some of the reactions to characters revealing their interest in women made me a little uncomfortable. You have a bunch of lesbian or bisexual women and then a lot of other characters going "that's unnatural!" and "how dare you?" While I understand the contextual reasoning, it still bummed me out. As did the fact that this great female led movie all about relationships between women ends up filtering back down to the man - it is dangerously close to dismissing women as a whole as gossipy and villainous and tainted, rather than being dismissive of people as a whole or being specific to characters. We are left with the idea that these women are responsible for the destruction of a man, and they're all feeling caught up about it, and I wish that hadn't been the case. I wanted a bit more of the unapologetic energy to balance it, because I wanted this movie to be a little bit more all-encompassing.
Rating: 7.5/10 - A fun, saucy, scandalous Christmas movie that nearly nailed it.
Pandering to me aside, this movie has a lot going for it. It was written and directed by François Ozon as an adaptation of the 1958 play by Robert Thomas, and recreates that theatrical vibe effortlessly with its singular setting and small scale drama but never feels claustrophobic. Most critics write about the wonderful use of pastiche in Ozon's integration of the actresses' prior works, but I'm a little baby in the film world and am only familiar with, of course, Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve. I don't doubt this point, but I don't think it's integral to enjoyment of the movie. Most important is your tolerance for musicals, of which this was quite a tame one.
The strength of this movie lies predominantly with its cast. As it revolves around a group of the titular eight women trying to work out who amongst them is the murderer of the family patriach, there's going to be something for everyone. I was particularly enamored with the openly bisexual femme fatale Pierette played by Fanny Ardant, but Isabelle Huppert's Augustine was also phenomenal in her spinster spiral and Catherine Deneuve as the wife of the deceased was perfectly tightly wound and look, literally everyone in this movie was great.
Less great? I mean, I guess some of the reactions to characters revealing their interest in women made me a little uncomfortable. You have a bunch of lesbian or bisexual women and then a lot of other characters going "that's unnatural!" and "how dare you?" While I understand the contextual reasoning, it still bummed me out. As did the fact that this great female led movie all about relationships between women ends up filtering back down to the man - it is dangerously close to dismissing women as a whole as gossipy and villainous and tainted, rather than being dismissive of people as a whole or being specific to characters. We are left with the idea that these women are responsible for the destruction of a man, and they're all feeling caught up about it, and I wish that hadn't been the case. I wanted a bit more of the unapologetic energy to balance it, because I wanted this movie to be a little bit more all-encompassing.
Rating: 7.5/10 - A fun, saucy, scandalous Christmas movie that nearly nailed it.
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