Those who know me as a movie-lover know how eagerly I’ve been awaiting the release of François Ozon’s film 8 WOMEN. After finding out about it in FILM COMMENT this past spring, my anticipation for the film has grown steadily. Of course, as long as I’ve been waiting, no doubt my excitement may have escalated completely out of proportion with the film itself, leaving me disappointed. I’ve had thoughts over the past week or so that I’d see the film and hate it simply because I’d expected too much from it. I finally managed to see the film today and... well, it’s even better than I had hoped it would be.

The film, “liberally inspired” by a Robert Thomas play, is essentially an Agatha Christie/”closed room” mystery, in which a crime is committed, no one in the house can escape, and everyone is a suspect. The only man in the house, Marcel, is first seen lying in bed, a knife plunged into his back. This leaves the 8 women of the title: Marcel’s glamourous wife Gaby, her prim spinster sister Augustine, Gaby’s gamine older daughter Suzon and her tomboy younger daughter Catherine, Gaby and Augustine’s wheelchair-bound mother Mamy, the long-serving housekeeper Madame Chanel, recently-hired maid Louise, and a latecomer, Marcel’s estranged sister Pierrette.

It sounds like a pretty formulaic lot, composed mainly of archetypes, but half of the fun of the characters comes from the actors portraying them, particularly if you love French films as I do. What a cast! The beautiful and iconic Catherine Deneuve plays Gaby, employing all the elegance at her disposal to lend her character an air of superiority. Isabelle Huppert, that consummate actress, is Augustine, all sarcasm and chilly veneer. Danielle Darrieux, who has been acting in films since the 1930s, portrays the role of Mamy, having played Deneuve’s mother in several films.

Emmanuelle Béart, she of the succulent lips and the cool, appraising stare, inhabits the Louise’s French maid uniform in ways that lead the mind to ponder all the fetishistic implications of the outfit, down to her knee-high black boots (naughty!). Virginie Ledoyen plays Suzon, who like her character in LA CEREMONIE seems proper on the outside but hides a big secret. Fanny Ardant, François Truffaut’s final muse, is Pierrette, tall and supple, with handsome features and a way of smoking that marks her as “liberated”. Ludivine Sagnier as Catherine and Firmine Richard as Chanel aren’t as well-known to most audiences, but fit into their roles seamlessly as well.

Once Marcel is discovered and the women find themselves stranded in the house, accusations begin flying. Secrets bob to the surface, and no one is immune. There is some business about bonds which Mamy may or may not want to give up. Augustine harbors strong feelings for Marcel. It is revealed that Pierrette has visited the house before, against Gaby’s orders, and indeed that she is a frequent “guest” of Madame Chanel. Louise’s position as a maid is found to be incidental to her reasons for having been hired. Meanwhile, Suzon, who sees her status as a student as granting her a logic that the others perhaps lack, tries to get to the bottom of the case, with help from Catherine, an avid reader of mystery novels.

The film is a triumph of style. The opening frames show the estate blanketed in a thick layer of fake snow, the house is impeccably decorated, the characters are perfectly costumed, made-up, and coifed. Deneuve’s above-reproach green gown contrasts directly with Ardant’s attention-grabbing red dress. Darrieux’s lilac outfit covers everything, emphasizing the character’s age and her lack of need to show off. Huppert’s hair is in a tight bun, and she wears horn-rimmed glasses which mark her as a woman for whom sex has played a decidedly small role. Béart’s maid ouftit is completely different than Richard’s more modest apron and dress. Ledoyen wears clothes which would be at home in an Audrey Hepburn film, whereas Sagnier’s would be better suited to Hayley Mills.

The characters themselves are just as stylized, with each performance satisfying the requirements for its corresponding archetype. To make the characters “realistic” would have been, in my opinion, a miscalculation. Some critics have criticized Ozon for these characters, stating that he “shows contempt” for the women he portrays in this film. Not so- what I believe Ozon is saying with this film is that, all too often in stories told by men, be they in theatre, literature, or cinema, women are shoehorned into convenient roles, such as the matron, the virgin, the "loose woman", the servant, the spinster. The characters in 8 WOMEN find ways to break free of their pre-ordained molds, if only momentarily.

Another fascinating element of the film is how he constantly finds alignments between the characters. For example, Gaby and Suzon are both older sisters, and are more ladylike than their younger sisters, Augustine and Catherine. Madame Chanel and Augustine both speak of their loneliness. Both Gaby and Mamy have lost their husbands. And yet, in the aftermath of Marcel’s murder, the characters don’t band together but rather belt out accusations and slander. Could it be that the roles assigned to each woman have kept them all from truly connecting? Consider that, in a film that always tries to fit as many of its actresses into the frame as possible, the eight women are almost never within the same frame until the very end of the film.

But I’m making the film sound scholarly and boring. It’s also a rare treat, with melodrama, mystery, mayhem... and music! As you may or may not have heard, each actress gets a chance to sing a classic French pop song onscreen. Ludivine Sagnier kicks off the proceedings with a fun little ditty about how her dad isn’t “with it” (prior to the discovery of his corpse, of course), and the film occasionally stops the action for each actresses until the final number, sung by Danielle Darrieux. A natural reaction would be to try and pick a favorite, but it’s too close a race for me, as each is good in its own way. This is the best I can do- Ardant’s is the most stylish, Richard’s the most poignant, Béart’s the catchiest, Sagnier’s the most spirited, and Deneuve’s the classiest. But the best? Well... I’ll leave you to decide.

Anyway, the film’s too full of wonderful moments to choose favorites in any department. I’ll list some of them, treading lightly for those who haven’t seen it.
- Mamy’s “Christmas miracle”
- Pierrette’s entrance
- a private conversation between Gaby and Suzon, in which Suzon learns her mother’s secret
- Augustine’s “transformation”
- the classic line “go fetch Mamy from the closet”
And, of course, the already-infamous catfight scene between Deneuve and Ardant, which plays like nothing so much as a Truffaut fan’s deepest fantasy sprung to Technicolor life. This is by no means a complete list of great moments from the film, merely a sampling. Better to let you discover the rest for yourself.

In stories of this nature, the mystery has to be solved, and the killer has to be found. True to the genre, the woman who has hidden her secrets the best up until the end is revealed as the guilty party, but Ozon has more surprises in store for the audience after the truth has been told. Without cheating, Ozon finds a way to resolve the mystery while implicating all his characters in Marcel’s death.

With the holidays approaching, I can’t help but remember back to when I was a child, still having Christmas with my family. It was a tradition on Christmas morning that we would give out all the presents, each family member opening one at a time. Sometimes we’d get gifts we needed, such as new clothes or items for school. Other times, there would be nice surprises, which we didn’t need and didn’t necessarily ask for, but were fun nonetheless. And finally, just when it seemed that all the presents had been given out, my mother would let out a startled “oh!”, as though she’d forgotten something, and produce two more gifts (one for me, one for my brother). We’d open them with great eagerness to find the gifts we’d wanted most of all. Those days are gone now, but they’re happy memories, and watching 8 WOMEN, for all its intellectualism and subtext, reminded me of opening that final present on Christmas morning. Forgive me if I gush, but even film nerds like me are permitted their fits of passion, aren’t they?

Recommended: Yes