Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

morrison-dylan-fan For the final week of ICM's Musical Challenge,I started checking lists for Musicals I may have accidentally overlooked. Finding his 2014 "Woman's Picture" The New Girlfriend to be a tantalising affair, I was intrigued to stumble on a Musical by auteur François Ozon,which led to me meeting each of the eight women.The plot:Meeting up in the family mansion for Christmas, Gaby,Louise, Augustine, Catherine and Suzon decide to keep their disagreements with husband/father Marcel to themselves. Shattering the Christmas spirit,the family members and maid Chanel find Marcel with a knife in his back. As each women circles each other with suspicions, (and all the roads are cut off) they hear a knock at the door and greet fellow Marcel's sister Pierrette,who has somehow been able to reach the mansion. View on the film:Taking the project after originally planning to remake George Cukor's The Women,co-writer/(with Marina de Van) directing auteur François Ozon & cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie keep the film rooted to a "Woman's Picture" atmosphere,via Ozon startling colour-coding stylisation unveiling Ozon early use of lush colours that pop on the screen,with each woman being dressed to her most elegant. Keying in on the mystery in one location, Ozon and Lapoirie knock down stage limitation with darting camera moves making the quirky Musical numbers appear from nowhere,and stylish whip-pans closing on the suspicions the eight women have for each other. Gathering the women from an adaptation of Robert Thomas's play, the screenplay by Ozon and Marina de Van break all the household rules with a deliciously dark comedic line underlying the classical Murder Mystery setting, via the dialogue having a peculiar tone,with each of the women revealing their inner challenges as the murder victim lays upstairs.Set against the classical backdrop of the family mansion, the writers turn the setting inside out with a sharp wit peeling away at every clue each family member has, to reveal an ingenious twist ending.Coming from all eras of French cinema from Poetic Realism,New Wave and the 2000's,the ensemble cast each give impeccable performances. Hammering home the family rules, Danielle Darrieux gives a fiery performance as Mamy, whilst François Truffaut muses Fanny Ardant and Catherine Deneuve light each other up as Femme Fatale Pierrette,and the calculating,icy Gaby. Joining in the mystery, Emmanuelle Béart spins a kooky turn as Louise,while Isabelle Huppert superbly makes Augustine the outsider in the family,and Ludivine Sagnier gives a sexy kooky edge as Catherine,in the mystery of 8 women.

The Couchpotatoes I normally never ever stop watching a movie before it ends. Even if it's terrible. But with this one I had to and it's my own fault. Because I didn't read that besides a mystery/crime it was also a musical. And if there is a thing that I absolutely hate in movies then it is that stupid singing and hopping around. I just wanted to watch this movie because they had good actresses but from the beginning I already had a feeling it was not going to be what I expected. It felt like I was watching a play in a theater, and not a good one. Then after about fifteen minutes they started singing for the first time. I thought it was strange they started singing and was wondering if maybe they heard a tune on the radio and started to join in or something like that. But when a little bit later they started singing for a second time I finally realized it was one of those dumb musicals. So I did what I said I would never do. I stopped watching the movie before the end. Do I regret it? Absolutely not! Musicals are just a waste of time and I don't get why a movie lover would like that kind of garbage.

Atli Hafsteinsson What sort of film 8 Women is depends on whom you ask. Some may call it a whodunit, some may call it melodrama and yet others may call it a postmodern who's-who. But it's not really any of these. It is a quite uncategorizable French film that's in parts murder mystery, in parts musical. In any case, it's a searing, enjoyable character piece exploring 8 fascinating female figures.Presumed to be set in 1950s France, eight women assemble at their countryside home ready to spend Christmas together. But the celebrations are put on hold when Marcel, the only man in the house, is found stabbed to death in his bed. Since it's snowed in, it's clear that one of the eight women committed the murder. Fueled by this fear, the eight women begin to interrogate each other, and as they do, the real meat of the story unfolds. Suffice it to say, nothing is what it seems.8 Women takes a set-up that Agatha Christie made famous in books like "And Then There Were None" and plays with it in a very tongue-in-cheek way. At the same time it still, astonishingly, manages to be very moving. It takes itself just seriously enough, as evidenced by the movie's most famous trait; the song and dance numbers. Each woman gets a little song sequence to herself, in which she gets to revel in her character. It should be noted that all of these are already well-known French songs, such as "Pile oú face" sung by the minxish Emmanuelle Béart in her iconic maid's outfit, and "Toi jamais" by Catherine Deneuve. The brilliance of these scenes is that unlike in most musicals, the characters are very much aware that a song and dance is going on. When the movie's first song kicks in, the mother enthusiastically starts dancing along, to the grandmother's consternation, and afterwards can be heard humming the chorus to herself. It's a cheeky breaking of the 4th wall that has not its like in any other movie. These music scenes give a great charm to the movie, so much so that there was even a soundtrack album released.The murder mystery is the movie's setup, but far more important are the women themselves, as evidenced by the title. 8 Femmes is as much a story about the female psyche as it is a crime drama, and each of the eight women is a fascinating character in her own right. Of particular note, though, is the high-strung, hypochondriac spinster Augustine, performed by an electrifying Isabelle Huppert. Fanny Ardant is then spellbinding as the victim's estranged sister Pierette, a femme-fatale who seems quite above the drama most of the other women are up to their necks in, but delights in taking part in it. Catherine Deneuve is also strong as the matriarch, Gaby, who struggles to keep her well-ordered world from falling apart as more and more secrets are revealed. Adultery, lesbianism, incest, the plot only thickens every time someone opens her mouth.If all the above seems like a very far-fetched blend, that probably stands to reason. But everyone involved is determined to tell this ridiculous story with love and passion. The cast is all big French names, young and old, which is something Hollywood could definitely learn from, from the young and vivacious Ludivine Sagnier as the victim's bratty teenage daughter Catherine to grande dame Danielle Darrieux in the role of the spiteful grandma. This movie is one of the reasons why there are awards for ensemble casts, and indeed the film garnered the Silver Berlin Bear and the European Film Award for this very reason. These actresses and their characters are the heart of the film. The delivery is sharp and biting across the board, and thus the film is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny on many occasions.8 Femmes is, at the end of the day, a riveting mish-mash of film genres, told both with love, intrigue and tongue firmly planted in cheek. It's a fascinating, slightly self-conscious tribute to both film genres and actresses as much as it is an entertaining crime story. Parts of it will ask you to suspend your disbelief, but even so, the film reels back in even its biggest doubters with a superb plot twist towards the end. Still, what's important here is to what the movie's title so aptly pertains; the eight women. Let them take you on a ride you are unlikely to ever forget.

moefaulkner 8 women find themselves trapped in a large mansion in the middle of a snow storm. The only male family member has been killed, and as the women try to discover who the murderer amongst them is, nasty family truths are revealed along the way.Now, being rather cynical by nature, I find farces and parodies quite difficult to stomach and am perhaps not the best person to ask an opinion about such a film as 'Huit femmes'. It admittedly took me a bit of time to find the funny side of the women bursting unexpectedly into song intermittently during the course of the film and I couldn't help finding the purposefully complicated narrative involving adultery, alcoholism, lesbianism, incest, just stupidly tedious rather than witty and sharp.Yet, with a star-studded cast who manage to portray their characters beyond their clichés (I was afraid, for example, that Virginie Ledoyen's Suzon was going to remain a prim and pretty faced 'goody two shoes' throughout the film), the film's self-conscious theatricality, and the clever twist of the film's dénouement, 'Huit femmes', was more enjoyable than I first expected (especially having seen the sickly pinks and pastel colours of the DVD case's front cover).You will either find 'Huit femmes' very entertaining or distinctly tiresome, it's all according to taste. However, for my part, I found it quite difficult to care by end.