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8 Women

8 Women

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A classic film noir
Review: This is one of the finest french movies that I was able to enjoy in the last couple of years. It is a must see!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If you see one French musical murder mystery this year.....
Review: After the absorbing "Under The Sand", director Francois Ozon has completely changed tack with this delightful confection starring some of French cinema's most legendary and indeed most beautiful actresses. Taking his cue from the stereotypical murder mystery with suspects trapped in a secluded mansion, Ozon has transformed this into a colourful and sometimes even camp (in the best sense of the word) film with women at the centre.

It is difficult to single out individual performances - however the two youngest actresses, Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier suffer a little in the presence of the great firmament of acting. Catherine Deneuve, as always is luminous while Firmine Richard gets the best song, and her delivery gives it added pathos. Emmanuelle Beart is sultry, Fanny Ardant is vampy and the grande dame of the cinema, Danielle Darrieux ("Voleurs! Assasins!") adds great comic touches. However, by a nose the most outstanding performace has to be Isabelle Huppert's spinster, Augustine. It would have been easy to go over the top with her character (and at times she veers dangerously close) but she is able to pull back and her "singing moment" challenges Richard's for being the most heart-breaking.

The film does betray its theatrical origins sometimes but this lends itself to the artifice that Ozon wishes to create. Once you have got over the unlikely scenario of suspects in a murder breaking into song, you will sit back and thoroughly enjoy this winning musical.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: more than bad
Review: this is for sure the badest and most boring film i have ever seen (i swear).

8 women in one room for more than 5 minutes is by far too much.
and everybody has to sing a chanson.

this is horrible !

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Strange..but the actresses!
Review: The movie is unique no doubt and I don't know if that's good or not. The story is adequate but the attention should be directed towards the art direction, costuming and the actresses! So many beautiful French leading ladies on the same screen is overwhelming. The several lesbian undertones was distracting but I enjoyed watching it. There's mystery and fun. See it at least once.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: cutesy, cloying farce
Review: "8 Women" is a corny throwback to all those archaic stage melodramas in which an assortment of oddball characters become prime suspects in a grizzly murder. These tales inevitably take place in some isolated setting cut off from the outside world (an elegant French home inundated by a perpetual blizzard is the locale here), with each of the characters having more than ample motive for committing the crime. As "the plot thickens," the characters reveal all the deep dark secrets that have been lurking beneath the placid surface of a polite, bourgeois existence. A whole genre of drawing-room farces has been built around this premise in the past - and the wonder is that anyone felt the compelling need to revive it now.

Well, writer/director Francois Ozon obviously did and turned to Robert Thomas' play for his source of inspiration (if one chooses to apply so lofty a term to describe what ends up on the screen). In the film, Catherine Deneuve, Isabel Huppert Fanny Ardant, Danielle Darrieux and Emmanuelle Beart portray just some of the women who play an important part in the life of Marcel, the man who is discovered dead one morning, the victim of a knife stab to the back.

Since this is obviously intended as an homage to a type of harmless entertainment that has long since passed from the scene, it seems a bit curmudgeonly of me to point out that "8 Women" is a fairly appalling misfire, an exercise in style whose archness and cloyingness quite literally set the teeth on edge. Just because a film is intended as a "pastiche" does not give it carte blanche to be as bad as this one turns out to be. Every moment of the film feels excruciatingly self-conscious and cutesy, as if the writer and director were winking at us, making us feel good about ourselves for being clever and sophisticated enough to get the joke. This is never more the case than in the lame, off-putting musical numbers that the characters launch into at a moment's notice. The filmmakers underscore the theatrical ambiance of the original piece by retaining the elaborate single set and the patently artificial backdrops - and the film is certainly pretty to look at what with all the splashes of flashy color emanating from the period furnishings and costumes (the film is set in the 1950's and the photography captures the glossy look of the films of that era). The ladies - fine actresses all - pull off their roles fairly well, but some of them do get a bit irritating at times. However, I choose to blame the material rather than the actresses themselves for this turn of events.

"8 Women" is an attempt to revive the classic drawing room farce with just enough modern "spin" to make it appear relevant (there's a heavy emphasis on lesbianism, for example, to give this antiquated vehicle its up-to-the-minute, 21st Century sheen). It's a shame, given all the talent involved here, that the film turns out to have all the charm, wit and pertinence of one of those "Murder Mystery/Crime-Solving Weekends" that people were flocking to in the 1980's and '90's, designed for all those amateur detectives and Sherlock Holmes wannabes who simply weren't content to do their sleuthing from the comfort of their own armchairs at home and felt compelled to try their hand at it in public. "8 Women" is pretty much on that level.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: bare bones dvd edition of gallic fluff
Review: This is a silly bit of fluff but it is fun and looks great. How could it not, with so many terrific French actresses all playing to stereotype as the wife, sister, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, cook, chambermaid and daughters of a murdered man, stranded on an estate and gradually coming to the realization that there is a murderer among them? A 1960's mise-en-scene and appropriately gorgeous costumes cannot entirely make palatable the songs or the plot, such as they are.

DVD extras, there are none. You can see the French with English or Spanish subtitles. (Unlike another reviewer has said, there is not the option to select "8 Femmes" and see the film without subtitles. In addition, the Languages screen does not let you change the settings except to ADD Spanish subtitling -- at the top of the screen!) The only extra is a trailer. Paltry fare indeed.

Worthwhile viewing only if you are a devotee of French cinema.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Again Americans who can't use their DVD properlu
Review: Once again just like with Asia Argento's SCARLET DIVA where some American customers claimed that there were no subtitles when in fact they appear automatically in this case 8 WOMEN gives the user the choice. If you click on 8 Femmes instead of 8 Women at the start menu you DO get the film in French with NO subtitles if you click 8 Women you get it in French with subtitles.
Why can't you people use this technology it is SO simple!!

Howard Region 1 consumer in a Region 2 part of the world

Manchester UK.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fluffy fun
Review: Well, no one said it was supposed to be serious, and it's not. It's just a silly, riotous evening of laughter, some of it so 'out there' that you can't believe you're actually watching it. Cast is loaded with French 'name' actresses, all 8 of them. Full of sidelong glances, over the top cliches, French stereotypes, nut-ball songs and dances - and a murder. Dum-de-dum-dum. With skits and schticks that'll keep you up giggling as you remember them later in bed when you're trying to sleep, and with a setting (remote snowbound country home) that is sure to remind you of some of Agatha Christie's classics, this one is a winner, all the way.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: okay come on...
Review: ...If you havent taken the time to see more films with Isabelle Huppert, you are definately depriving yourself of one of the greatest actors in this world. She does complete 180's from part to part, and if you couldnt tell it was her because of what she looks like, you wouldnt know it was her, she is one of the greatest actors of this time...so seeing her in a fun light hearted role was enjoyable...

this movie is a silly murder mystery, and gives an eye in on the frenchs' musical styles. Its cute, and I had to stay till the end untill i figured it all out...

Its just fun, I don't think its the greatest foreign films, but i thourougly enjoyed myself the whole time. I give it a four, because it seemed to be a bit slow at times, but on the whole, still an A-

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Scene chewing fun
Review: What a great display of acting and sinister fun. Kind of a Murder On the Orient Express with a slanted French female view--with a musical thrown in for good measure.
To see such top drawer French talent letting their hair down and revealing their most embarassing secrets is a delight.
The whole atmosphere is catty as everyone suspects one another.
Deneuve is the glue as the wicked cast surround each other like hungry wolves.
Isabelle Huppert, the nerdy uptight aunt is a marvel--watch out for one of the best transformations you'll ever see.
Each cast member is a gem and the whole sordid affair leads to a very surprising who dunnit ending--don't want to give anything away.
This is one campy half sick joke of a movie that grows deeper and richer as one reflects on it.
One of the ten best films from 2002. Too many critics missed the boat on this one.


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