Hell Hate No Fury Like 8 Women Scorned

Is it possible to have an estrogen contact high? This weekend I saw the intoxicating French movie 8 Women directed by François Ozon. Watching this homage / parody of Hollywood glamour was like downing technicolour jell-o shots for two hours. Lovingly composed within vibrant, eyeball-staining sets, a cast of commanding French actresses rant, faint, weep, hurl insults and have hair-pulling, designer-outfit-bunching cat fights. 8 Women is one of the most energetically campy movies ever made.

Ozon loves women in the same way as Pedro Almodovar (Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown); aesthetically, not sexually. The difference is where Almodovar leaves earth under the fingernails, Ozon leaves sweet, perfumed syrup with maybe a hint of blood (I’m sure some humourless twit could argue 8 Women is an example of misandry or misogyny). The John Waters movie Hairspray also has a similar tone; nostalgia roughed up with gritty irony. The difference is where Ozon is art school Waters is more fart school (remember ordorama?). My point is that all of these movies are fine examples of exuberant, campy fun!

8 Women is set just before Christmas in 50’s France. The only male character (we never see his face or hear his voice) is found dead one morning with a knife in his back. His wife, sister, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, two daughters, maid and mistress are stranded inside the stately country home with the corpse while a winter storm builds outside. The phone line has been cut, the car’s engine has been sabotaged, and the trapped women suspect and accuse each other of murder. As emotions simmer and boil over, secrets are revealed and a boat load of "lustrous maroon" herrings are thrown at the audience. It’s all so illogical! So absurd! But so what! The narrative is just the clothes hanger on which Ozon hangs this gorgeous, feminine tableau. Despite the murder mystery there is no suspense, only anticipation as we wait for the next “chick flick” cliché to be thrown to the masterful actresses who voraciously chew it to pieces without ever smudging their lip stick.

Ozon assembled a dream-cast including some French superstars who have worked with the likes of François Truffaut, Jacques Demy, Luis Bunuel, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Each actress nurtures a fully formed caricature mined from the rich earth of movie history; the brittle spinster played by a very funny Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher), the stingy matriarch played to goofy effect by Danielle Darrieux (The Earrings of Madame De…), and the steely bourgeois b!tch played by glamour-icon Catherine Deneuve (Belle De Jour, The Hunger). Every performance in the movie is b!tch, er...pitch-perfect (you really need to see the movie to understand why I’m relying on so many exclamation marks turned into inverted "i's").

There are other reasons to see 8 Women besides treating yourself to the beauty and the talent of the players. Cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie recreates the vibrant technicolour process to show off the royal golds, greens and reds of set designer Arnaud de Molèron, who makes the winter blizzard look like a Christmas card. The outfits by costume designer Pascaline Chavanne is not so much fashion as it is armour. It’s no accident that Ardant is shown buttoning up a heart-shaped opening in her top after her cat-fight-turned-kiss with Deneuve.

8 Women is both stylish and genuinely funny. Director Ozon sustains a tone of irony throughout, skirting the misogyny of the Hollywood history he recreates by heightening the melodrama just enough to make every scene both intense and absurd at the same time. Let’s call it “mockstalgia”: fondly recalling the past while using its dated conventions to get laughs. When devilishly pretty Emmanuelle Beart (Mission: Impossible) -- playing the part of the conniving trollop / servant replete with French maid’s uniform -- comes in to tell the others she almost fell to her death scaling the wall outside, the camera tilts down her body to dramatic orchestral music to show the tips of her pretty black boots carefully arranged with artificial snow. Later in the movie there is a scene in which Deneuve-- in what may be the funniest screen moment of her career -- brutally subdues her drunken, ranting mother. It’s all so absurd you can’t help but laugh out loud at the artificiality.

Despite these over-the-top scenes Ozon never sinks into total farce. His admiration for strong female characters comes through when he allows breathing space for scenes packing real emotional heft. Beart and Deneuve have a hotly intense confrontation where issues of class, power and sex are played out. Another scene features Ardant’s character Pierette – the aging, childless party girl -- who has just watched a scene of revelation an reconciliation between her sister-in-law (Deneuve) and her niece (perky Virginie Ledoyen). Ozon ends the scene with the camera lingering on Ardant’s face framed against a red velvet curtain as her smoldering eyes reveal the complex emotions of her character; sympathy for the innocent daughter exposed to a painful truth, jealousy towards the mother who has a daughter to love, and empathy for women in a painful place only women know. The scene is as emotionally resonant as anything in Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Ozon, respectfully, keeps the camera on Ardant’s face long enough to show the audience the emotional bonds that keep the female characters from -- well -- killing each other.

Oh yes; on top of everything else 8 Women is also a musical. Each actress performs a song that relays some deeper understanding of the character’s personality. This is where the movie becomes truly subversive; unlike conventional musicals where the songs are artificial intrusions used to relay a character’s emotional state; the musical numbers in 8 Women lift the characters (and the actors) out of the ironic use of melodramatic clichés and places them somewhere more vulnerable and real. The performance of silly 50’s French pop hit also removes the audience even further from reality and leaves us to the mercy of Ozon’s wicked sensibilities.

A fiercely intelligent female friend of mine liked the fact that every character in 8 Women is totally unapologetic. Yes, they treat each other horrendously; but they all understand each other, hide each others secrets, and realize that staying together is better than falling apart. It's hard to find this type of unrepentant, not totally unsympathetic, b!tch character in contemporary Hollywood. This point was driven home two days later as I watched Sweet Home Alabama in which the climactic scene involves a Hilary Clinton-type character (portrayed by Candice Bergman who was married to the late, acclaimed French film director Louis Malle for heaven's sake) being punched in the face by Reese Witherspoon’s character, a girl who liberates herself by becoming a hillbilly. Coming down off of my 8 Women high, Alabama’s brain dead misogyny was particularly offensive.

Considering the box office success of 8 Women overseas I’m dreading a gutless Hollywood knock-off. Ozon originally intended to shoot a remake of George Cukor’s The Women. Unfortunately (or fortunately as Ozon did not have to risk sacrilege), the rights to The Women are already locked up in another production deal. Still, the idea of Meg Ryan playing the part of the icy bourgeois perfected by Deneuve, and Sandra Bullock playing the worldly woman of ill repute Fanny Ardant created, makes me want to stab someone in the eye with a tube of lipstick. No doubt the Hollywood version will end with a teary-eyed group hug after every one falls into the swimming pool (it never snows in California).

The final frames of 8 Women are far more sophisticated than your typical Hollywood comedy ending. The camera pulls back to show all eight actors lined side by side, facing the camera, as if standing for applause after a stage show has ended (the movie is based on the 1960 crime play 8 Femmes). They join hands as if to tell the audience we are all in this production together; this movie, this play, this womanhood. For this, Ozon and the cast and crew of 8 Women deserves applause even if it is only bouncing back off the flat surface of the movie screen.