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The French Film Club of Palo Alto. This week's movie is:

Starring:

Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Hupert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fannny Ardant,
Virgine Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier

Summary

In the 1950s, a beautiful society lady, Gaby, lives with her husband Marcel, a wealthy industrialist, in a remote country mansion – along with her mother, spinster sister Augustine, teenage daughters Suzon and Catherine, and maids Louise and Madame Chanel. One winter’s day, Gaby returns to her house with her daughter Suzon to find that her husband has been murdered – he is lying dead in his bed with a knife in his back. Shocked, the women’s first thought is to call the police – but the phone line is dead and their only car has been put out of action. As snow builds up around them, the women find themselves marooned and at the mercy of the killer. Then, quite unexpectedly, Marcel’s estranged sister, Pierrete, makes a sudden unwelcome appearance. As the eight women strive to uncover the identity of the killer, old enmities resurface and bitter recriminations start to fly...

Review

With this outrageous mélange of murder mystery à la Agatha Christie and camp pastiche of 1950s Hollywood musical, François Ozon proves that he is not just one of France’s most versatile film directors. The film amply shows that he is also well on the way to becoming one of the most high profile and talented directors of his generation.

8 femmes makes a striking – indeed jarring – contrast with Ozon’s previous high-quality dramatic works, Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (2000) and Sous le sable (2000). Whereas those previous films were dark psychological dramas, intense and brooding works, 8 femmes is the total opposite – an intentionally over-the-top comic send-up of the crime/mystery genre, in which narrative content is totally subordinated to its garishly glitzy design and shameless all-star casting. In a sense 8 femmes is the ultimate parody of the kind of films the French directors of the New Wave rebelled against – films which were merely vehicles for popular film stars, almost totally bereft of any intellectual or artistic content. The irony is that not only is 8 femmes a plausible imitation of such films – it is also the absolute antithesis...

... What the film is really about is the eight women of its title – eight very different individuals whose own personal tragedies are exposed through the stimulus of a murder. Of course, the film’s preoccupation with parody and overly-abundant set of principal characters prevents it from being a serious character study, but the fact that it gets at least half-way there, and still be such an enormously effective comic send-up, is no mean feat. The real pleasure in the film lies in watching the way the eight disperate women interact with one another. Therein lies the comedy – and the tragedy also. The appeal of 8 femmes is that it is the opposite of what it appears to be (namely, a straightforward spoof). Rather, it is a more profound and complex work, which leads us, the audience, to question our approach to cinema. What is the role of cinema - François Ozon appears to be asking – is it to inform, stimulate or entertain? 8 femmes does all three, but in an ingenious and somewhat sophisticated way.

This is a film which is cleverly calculated to appeal to quite different strata of cinemagoers, at very different levels. Monsieur Ozon appears to have found the filmmaker’s holy grail, the coveted recipe of making an intelligent and reactionary film which can appeal to the masses and earn him commercial success, without sacrificing his hard-earned reputation as a serious avant-garde director.

Without a shadow of doubt, most of the success and impact of 8 femmes derives from its impressive cast list. Take away three or four of its lead actresses, and the film would very probably have failed spectacularly. Ozon’s masterstroke was in realising from the outset that such a film could only have worked with such a strong cast – and he is entirely vindicated in his choice of cast. And what a cast. Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart, Virginie Ledoyen... It reads like a Who’s Who of French cinema, with the leading actresses from each generation represented. With such a bouquet of beauty, talent and intelligence at his disposal, Ozon would have been criminally irresponsible if he had failed to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Needless to say, the gamble paid off magnificently, and not one of Ozon’s eight glittering angels fails to shine in the role into which she has been skilfully shoehorned. Fanny Ardant is stunning (and worryingly convincing) in her role of a totally liberated lesbian prostitute – relishing her stereotypical rendition of the French pute whilst subtly exposing a tragic vulnerability. She is only narrowly eclipsed by Catherine Deneuve, whose portrayal of the self-centred bourgeois husband-cheater is the perfect caricature of the kind of roles which have earned Deneuve her name. Her over-the-top reactions to such revelations as her daughter’s pregnancy and her negro maid’s lesbianism - totally appropriate for the era in which the film is set – are the stuff of classic vaudeville. Doyenne of French cinema, Danielle Darrieux is perfectly cast as the seemingly respectable grandmother who has more than a few skeletons in her cupboard – proving that she can still hold the limelight, even on the same set as such modern icons as Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert. Crossing a generation or two, Emmanuelle Béart regails us with a superlative – brilliantly post-modern – parody of the French housemaid – whose duties clearly include far more than polishing the family silver.

The comparative newcomers – but clearly major stars of tomorrow – Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier also have the opportunity to shine in this star-studded "girls’ only" extravaganza, as does the delightfully eccentric Firmine Richard. If there is one member of this dream ensemble who deserves special mention that has to be Isabelle Huppert. Although she has played a wide range of parts, in many diverse films, Huppert has a reputation for playing austere, emotionally crippled and vulnerable women. The words "comic farce" and "Isabelle Huppert" are not usually to be found in the same sentence. Ozon’s decision to cast her in 8 femmes in the film’s most over-the-top character was a calculated risk – he envisaged Huppert as a playing a female equivalent of Louis de Funès – but the gamble paid off. As the hypochondriac temperamental middle-aged spinster Augustine, Huppert reveals an astonishing aptitude for comedy which will doubtless broaden her repertoire and public appeal. Ozon’s personal preference for Huppert is reflected in the script, which sees the actress having by far the best lines, which she belts out with almost inhuman speed and venom. No character that Isabelle Huppert plays could ever be a simple caricature – and her role in 8 femmes is as complex and tragically flawed as any other on her impressive CV. Having driven her audience to the limits of hysteria with her comic outbursts, she moves them to tears with her soul-aching rendition of the song "Message personnel" , one of the film’s highlights. Isabelle Huppert is not the only cast member to have an impromptu musical number. Each of the 8 leading women gets her chance to sing her own personal drama – with varying degrees of success. After Huppert, the only other musical diversions which appear justified are the songs from Fanny Ardant (seduction personified) and Catherine Deneuve (the guilt-stricken husband-cheater).Fortunately each of the eight songs fits the period of the film and works with the grain of its feigned veneer of sugar-sweet superficiality.

If there is one area where the film is totally faultless, is in its design. The musical interludes are a natural part of the film’s design and work, along with the gaudy sets and chic period costumes, to create a real sense of phoney luxury and slightly sick-making shallowness. Whilst it could legitimately be classed as a masterwork of post-modern reductionism, it is clear that 8 femmes is primarily intended to entertain – something it manages to do magnificently. One of the most uplifting films to emerge from French cinema in recent years, it evokes the hypnotic escapism of the classical American musical whilst tickling our ribs with some sublime comedy. Not all spectators will appreciate the plethora of cinematic references (yes, the woman in the photograph is Romy Schneider), but few – if any – will fail to be entertained by this magnificently tongue-in-cheek comic romp, which is probably destined to become a classic. For the eternally surprising François Ozon, this will be one Hell of an act to follow.

© James Travers 2003

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