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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 17, 2002
8 Women (R) (106 min.) -- Imagine Hercule Poirot as a woman bursting into song while sorting through murder clues and you get the idea behind Francois Ozon's odd, mildly entertaining film. This is the musical mystery Agatha Christie never got around to writing, if such a thought ever occurred to her.
The film begins with the candy-coated cheerfulness of Gigi as a perky student named Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) comes home for Christmas. The other seven females are her mother, Gaby (Catherine Deneuve); grandmother Mamy (Danielle Darrieux); ill-tempered, neurotic aunt Augustine (Isabelle Huppert); little sister Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier); servants named Chanel (Firmine Richard) and Louise (Emmanuelle Beart), and a pot-stirring aunt Pierrette (Fanny Ardant).
The casting alone should excite French film fans, because these women have been involved in many of the most popular, influential Gallic films of the past four or five decades, although possibly never in a movie like this. 8 Women never attempts to hide its stage roots and spends most of its running time in the same room. Ozon, who directed and wrote, struggles to maintain dramatic inertia, making those bizarre times when someone starts singing the best parts of the show.
Suzon's arrival coincides with the discovery of the plot's only man -- her mostly unseen father, Marcel -- in bed with a knife in his back. Phone lines are cut, and transportation isn't available to contact the police. It's up to the women to determine which one of them performed the deed. Clues aren't as important as the exposure of family secrets, which give everyone a reason to kill Marcel. Ozon's script serves up too many bedroom secrets, with so many clunky "aha" moments that the eventual reaction is "so what?"
But the music, and the way Ozon poses his actors to deliver it, is marvelous. It's a classy delight to see an icon such as Deneuve kick up her heels and Huppert's prickly aunt softening through song. 8 Women uneasily combines two classic movie genres into a singular treat for adventurous moviegoers. B