8 Women film review

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8 WOMEN

With a slew of awards already under its belt both at home and elsewhere, the distributor of 8 Women will be hoping to capture some of the worldwide box office afforded to Amelie but twelve months ago. After all what could go wrong? Take eight of France's most iconic and beautiful actresses from across the generations, hole them up in a country cottage, add in a murder, some songs and a noted young director (Francois Ozon, who had a breakthrough hit with Sitcom in the late 90s), and surely the recipe for success is foolproof.

Well, not quite. The reactions to 8 Women will vary strongly. It may be that some people will find its style innovative, its concept intriguing and its plot amusing. But there may be a greater number, your reviewer among them, who will find the whole thing lost in translation.

Wholly set in an isolated French cottage where a dysfunctional family of females is meeting for the holidays, the film beings with the discovery of the dead body of the father of the house - the film's only male character. The assembled women range from his domineering wife (Deneuve), his remarkably dissimilar daughters (Ledoyen and Sagnier), his Sapphic sister (Ardant) and his maid and lover (Beart). Another sister (Huppert), a cook (Richard) and a dotty grandmother (Darrieux) make up a rather illustrious cast of classic French actresses. Never mind Deneuve, Darrieux has acted with everybody in French cinema since the 1930s and is a sort of Queen Mum figure for them. And this is the third time she has played Deneuve's mother.

So while the women try to figure out which of them is the murderer, it soon becomes evident that, as in all Christie and sub-Christie plots (and this is very sub-Christie), they all had both a reason and an opportunity to kill.