Avis des critiques

This happens to feature one of the most incredible casts ever assembled for *any* movie.

8 Women brings together some of the classiest actresses in the world, and they are all superb; despite the melodrama, they manage to bring real emotion to the story, making it moving when one might least expect it.

Yes, there is a whiff of vacuity and misogyny about 8 Women, but as in the other deliberately 'artificial' French film of 2001, Amélie, the euphoria of the spectacle is sufficient to keep these objections in the background.

"8 Women" finds the young French director Francois Ozon whipping up a confectionary pastiche of 1950s melodramas, 1960s musicals and the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock at their most deeply psychosexual. Which is to say that "8 Women" is a gorgeous, if disjointed, spectacle, made endurable, if not entirely comprehensible, by its eye-popping cast.

Movies like "8 Women" are essentially made for movie-lovers. You have to have seen overdecorated studio musicals, and you have to know who Darrieux and Deneuve and Beart and Huppert and Ardant are, to get the full flavor.

Under the pretense of casting a spell of wonder, mystery, joy and despair, all Ozon has really done is set up a dry, lifeless environment in which ironic detachment - the arch-enemy of all great art - can flourish like a stingy cactus.

Save for the stained glass windows and fake doves that point to the duplicitous fragility of Huppert’s Augustine, there are no real signs within the film’s artifice by which the emotions of these women can be gauged. If Ozon’s stylistic choices are superficial then his concerns with race and sexuality are even more so.

From its satiny pink floral opening credits to its absurdly tragic climax, this film treads the boundary, thinner than a silken thread, between melodrama and farce.

Although it starts off vaguely amusing, “8 Women” grows progressively sour, curdled by the filmmakers’ bad faith and lack of compassion. It isn’t just the tone that’s off; it’s the point. Pastiche is always difficult to pull off, but it’s close to impossible when you don’t have a feel for the original material.

This is Agatha Christie territory played for laughs, or at least the French equivalent of it. And either you find it very entertaining indeed, or distinctly tedious, according to taste.