Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

8 Women (2001)

Director: François Ozon

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Ozon couldn't get the rights to remake Cukor's The Women, and so he fell upon a forgotten boulevard-theatre mystery by one Robert Thomas as a vehicle for divas of all ages. The play is an Agatha Christie knock-off set in the 1950s: all eight women stuck in a snowbound country house had motives for killing the patriarch Marcel, whose corpse lies upstairs. Ozon re-runs all his strategies from Water Drops on Burning Rocks: he wallows in homages to Hollywood melodramas, plays up the theatricality of all, and gives each diva one vintage French pop song to perform, to express her character's inner feelings. It's never boring, and sometimes quite bracing: the moment when Deneuve hits Darrieux over the head with a bottle lingers in the memory. But the material is hopelessly thin and the package is too obviously calculated to hit box-office gold. And this is a style of camp so broad that even the most bovine straight can get it.

Author: TR 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: François Ozon

Producer: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Danielle Darrieux, Ludivine Sagnier, Firmine Richard, Dominique Lamure full cast

Duration: 111 mins

Related articles


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.