a French Comedy of the Year

My first movie epinion...

So far the year 2002 looks like all other years. I mean, every year you're expecting something really SPECIAL to come. Every January and February you're being told to wait till May; so you patiently wait for the first couple of summer blockbusters to explode in theatres and hope from heart they're going to be special, but usually your expectations are not met (still I LOVED 'Spider-man' this year, especially when compared to 'Attack of the Clones' - brrrr! ). In June you get a couple more, but in July they already kind of tire you out, so you try to hide in the shade of "smaller" movies - some of them may indeed satisfy your appetites better. There's a couple more dull comedies in August/September, usually warning you that the new schoolyear is coming on (sweet cherry pies and other movies about teens), so you put your trust in Christmas, when they promised to give you another couple of long awaited sequels.

And so year by year. I find that very exciting indeed and last week, too, had a pleasure (slightly disappointing though) to see 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'. Yet this review is about a movie I saw just yesterday... and so far I must admit - it's my favorite comedy this year.

So '8 Femmes' - "femme" being French for "a woman".

The movie is a mixture of an old-fashioned detective story, a comedy and a soap opera (don't let me scare you off by the latter). The plot is as simple as it gets - 8 women of different age are kind of locked in a mansion, with a body of their family member lying dead in the bedroom. The late family member is also the only MAN in the family (consisting also of two maids), namely - the father. Naturally they're suspecting each other and as they are telling each other (FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!) what they actually think about each other, some secrets come unglued.

Ok, "some" maybe is not the word here - in nearly two hours this family tells MORE secrets of their than a quality soap opera does in 160 series. But please take note of the following: this is a FRENCH comedy, and though the formula of family secrets (hey - we all know what these secrets usually are) is the same everywhere, the approach is absolutely different, as is the French humour. Do you know what French humour is like? What, you don't? Well, then at least for this reason I hope you'll give it a chance. I can only warn you that it's very, VERY witty at times. Why warn? Well, this is the second reason you might give it a chance ;)

And here's the third and actually the reason I almost gave it the fifth star:

THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT THEM

About women. There are 8 ladies in this movie and believe me, almost everyone can find a woman (women) he knows in them. I'll only touch upon some of the characters:

Catherine Deneuve is Gaby, the mother - it is her husband who's found dead in their bedroom early in the morning. Wait - you may say - it's THEIR bedroom, right? So where was the lady herself early in the morning? Oh, believe me, this lady's got a lot of secrets... As almost all women of her age ;

Isabelle Hupert is Augustine, her sister, who sadly is not half as pretty as Gaby still is (and was; pay attention to the portrait on the wall towards the end of the movie, who knew that Catherine Deneuve looked EXACTLY like Romy Schneider?), so this is an envious and very mean sister. Yet like every member of this (nothing short of Adams) family, she's more than that.

Fanny Ardant is Pierette, Gaby'd daughter - like all pretty young ladies, she's got her big SECRET too - but I'd never guess the REASON she crept into the house that night...

Emmanuelle Beart is Luise, one of the maids, well... a VERY seductive one, I must say. Maids usually know everything in the house, Luise is no exception: the big question is why is she in THIS house? Like everything in this story, it's for a reason, heh-heh...

Ok, I've been kidding you - it's no detective story (maybe just a little bit), it's no family drama either. What we have is a beautiful, not too sophisticated yet unexpectedly wise comedy, that may turn out to be a pleasant surprize. And finally - I'm sure you'll all agree - our fair ladies deserve much more than a 1 hour 50 min. movie about them. And so this ain't one, because it's actually about men. And, if you're still able to follow my rather subtle point, I'll explain -

The best thing about this movie is that it's about how women treat men in this world (or in one house, whatever). Surely I didn't mean that every lady out there must correspond to a character in this movie. Every of these 8 femmes has her own idea of how to TREAT a man - the one who's now lying dead in the bedroom, logicaly he can't hear them anymore - so they unveil their secrets and share them with us, viewers. Wherein the wisdom of the movie lies.

Because, try to believe me, there's nothing as beautiful as these secrets.