(no subject)
Six people are trapped by bad weather in a desolate mansion. They cannot leave; they are not alone.
With them are a heavyset female cook, a blonde French maid with a lascivious past, and a dead man.
One of the eight people in the house killed him, and in this dark comedy-gloriously campy and set in the 1950s-it is only by revealing their inmost and most fiercely protected secrets that the suspects will they discover who among them is a murderer. The ending of this whodunit is...simply and shockingly deliciously unanticipatable.
If you think this is Clue, think again.
It's François Ozon's 8 Femmes (8 Women), and it's fantastic. The eight women in question are the domestic complaints of the victim-his wife, sister, sister- and mother-in-law, daughters, and servants. Every one of them have ample motive to want him dead. Aside from being a veritable who's-who of French actresses today, it's stunningly beautiful, and stunningly plotted. And its wacky heartfelt musical numbers and candy-coated tragedy in hyper-vivid color dare you to bookend it against that other Catherine Deneuve musical-Les Parapluies de Cherbourg ( my review here)-and, while lighter fare, it simply cannot be found lacking in this comparison.
Garish and gorgeous as its eponymous femmes fatales.
With them are a heavyset female cook, a blonde French maid with a lascivious past, and a dead man.
One of the eight people in the house killed him, and in this dark comedy-gloriously campy and set in the 1950s-it is only by revealing their inmost and most fiercely protected secrets that the suspects will they discover who among them is a murderer. The ending of this whodunit is...simply and shockingly deliciously unanticipatable.
If you think this is Clue, think again.
It's François Ozon's 8 Femmes (8 Women), and it's fantastic. The eight women in question are the domestic complaints of the victim-his wife, sister, sister- and mother-in-law, daughters, and servants. Every one of them have ample motive to want him dead. Aside from being a veritable who's-who of French actresses today, it's stunningly beautiful, and stunningly plotted. And its wacky heartfelt musical numbers and candy-coated tragedy in hyper-vivid color dare you to bookend it against that other Catherine Deneuve musical-Les Parapluies de Cherbourg ( my review here)-and, while lighter fare, it simply cannot be found lacking in this comparison.
Garish and gorgeous as its eponymous femmes fatales.