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| | Salesrank: 60546
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The cream of France's cinema sirens star in the deliciously candy-colored 8 Femmes, a murder mystery speckled with ornate performances that play up the public image of the actresses themselves. Eight women find themselves snowbound in a house with a dead man--a man each of them (his wife, sister, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, daughters, housekeeper, and chambermaid) had reason to kill. Secrets tumble forth, accusations fly, catfights flare, and confrontations turn steamy, all accompanied by campy performances of 1960s French pop songs. At first, these musical numbers seem like pure kitsch, comic and entertaining, but over the movie's course, they become strangely touching. Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Virginie Ledoyen, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Isabelle Huppert, Ludivine Sagnier, and Firmine Richard are all superb, investing their cardboard characters with a strange emotional resonance--and their costumes are exquisite. An entrancing piece of giddy fluff. --Bret Fetzer
8 femmes Reviews:
Worst movie ever? 
2009-12-06 - This is very possibly the worst movie ever made, unless I'm missing something and it's intended to be a spoof. Allowing for that possibility, I'm still incredulous when 'dramatic' situations (one family member just learning of another family's member's being murdered) progress within seconds to a laughably over-staged chorus featuring lyrics on the order of "It's a Small World After All." Adding to the absurdity is one of the eight women in the movie being shot, from offstage somewhere by an unknown assailant, falling into a heap on the floor ..... but, miraculously, no blood! By the end of the ordeal of watching this, I found myself bewildered, wondering what could have prompted backers to fund the production, and actors to sign onto the project. If I had auditioned for a part, hearing from the director what part I might have, then filled in on the scene, I would have walked out of the audition. Unless the director convinced me that the entire venture was just a parody taken to the brink of the known universe. Which is where it deserves to rest in peace.
Awful
2009-06-27 - I dozed off part way through the film and then after watching another ten minutes just turned off the DVD player. The film seems to be aiming to be a comedy, but fails utterly. It can not be anything else except for a very weak (dark) comedy.
bizarre mix of parlor murder mystery, cabaret, and lousy comedy
2009-05-02 - I was very disappointed in this film. With such a stellar cast, I was expecting a really good psychodrama with interesting and perceptive twists.
Instead, you watch them sing (terribly), scream at each other (with very little humor that works), and run around in a fatuous investigation (unbelievably). The characters are so mutable that there is little consistency to them, and they make strangely abrupt transformations that make no sense. For example, Ardnt and Deneuve are fighting, perhaps murderously, and suddenly they start making out. Huppert, a dowdy spinster virgin, suddenly appears dressed to kill as a stunning sensual beauty. It adds nothing to the plot, doesn't fit with the characters, or resonate emotionally.
The whole thing is like a play you would see in an amateur theatre on vacation. But you have absolutely first-rate actresses, France's best, carrying on inanely. None of it worked for me.
Now it this kind of thing appeals to you, OK. But I saw no value in it at all. Not recommended.
Crazy Musical 
2009-01-07 - This film is a spoof of the "country house murder mystery" genre -- 8 women and a corpse snowed in at a country manor. Every once in a while one of them breaks into song and a new family secret is revealed. Fast paced and funny. French, but subtitles.
Waste of time and money
2008-09-13 - If you have no taste....no morals......and are tone deaf and have time to waste then this movie is for you. What a bomb.
