As Seen On Demand: 8 Women

Welcome to my first in a series of reviews called “As Seen On Demand.” One of the benefits of the current state of digital cable/Comcast is the existence of movie channels within the 300 block (hooray for HBO, Starz, Encore, Cinemax, and Showtime!) and their subsequent on-demand selections. This series will celebrate the good and the horrible shown randomly on those channels. The movies you end up watching at 2AM when you’ve got nothing better to do, and the movies you always wanted to see but never knew they could be as completely mind-numbingly horrible until you finally checked them out on your own time, stapled to your couch.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead!

First up is 8 Femmes, or 8 Women, a 2002 French film. It’s sort of the French equivalent of Clue, except it’s an all-female cast. And they sing. And there are lesbians.

The first time I saw this movie, I had to say, “What the hell?” I wasn’t expecting anything unusual. I didn’t know that the film was based on a 1960s play by Robert Thomas (a play that no one seems to have performed since 1960, or so the internet would have me believe. Seriously. I can’t find a production of it anywhere. There was a notice about a performance in Singapore a few years ago, and that’s about it. So much for getting my community theater to perform it, English-speaking American audiences be damned). I just knew my French teacher was having us watch it in a series of French films we were viewing as a way of learning the language without doing any real work (the benefit of the senior year non-AP French credit).

The film opens with Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) entering her brightly-colored, snowed-in French mansion. We learn quickly that she has returned on winter break from a generic and non-specific university, all to spend Christmas vacation with her wildly kooky family: uptight mother Gaby (Catherine Deneuve), sweet alcoholic grandmother Mamy (Danielle Darrieux), neurotic aunt Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), and not-quite-seventeen spunky and insolent sister Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier). Plus her long-time housekeeper Madame Chanel (Firmine Richard) and n00b maid/resident slut Louise (Emmanuelle Beart).

Oh, and she’s visiting her father, too. Of course. Or she would be, if he wasn’t dead in his bedroom. But we don’t know that yet. First, we get introductions to seven of the eight title women and an incredibly upbeat ear-worm of a musical number sung by Catherine (with Suzon and Gaby as backup dancers- by the way, there is absolutely nothing more amusing than seeing Catherine Deneuve as a backup dancer for a French teenager singing a sixties song in a movie that takes place sometime in the fifties). Anywho, after a little more time, Louise the maid goes to bring Monsieur Marcel, the patriarch of this shindig, his tea, and we find that monsieur est morte.

Eventually, we also get Fanny Ardant as streetwalker/estranged sister of the deceased Pierette. And from or through her, we get some of the best dialogue in the film.

Pierette to Louise, “Everyone knows you sleep around.”
Louise: “You know, since we sleep with the same ones.”

This movie has more ridiculous subplots than any movie I have ever seen in my entire life. Possibly combined. Watching it is like wandering around Sarah Winchester’s mystery mansion and trying to make sense of it all. There are plot points that are never explained (the father of Suzon’s baby, for instance- we get one extreme dun da DUUUUUUUUN of an explanation, and then we never hear about it again), conflicted relationships and character changes that rarely make sense (usually from Augustine), and songs that vary from slow and painful to perky and upbeat with a smattering of sultry mixed around, but that rarely if ever have anything to do with the plot and absolutely never have any bearing on the current conversation. (By the way, everyone gets a song, but the three best numbers come from Pierette, Gaby, and Louise).

Oh, and lesbians. Can’t forget the lesbians.

That said, it’s a world of fun. The ridiculousness is what makes it great. There are lines of dialogue that are so campy they’re hilarious:

Augustine: “I was polishing my mother of pearl comb.”
Gaby: “At 2AM?”
Augustine: “Combs never sleep!”

Etc. And the colors- oh, those bright, early 2000s equivalent of fifties colors. Oh, the color coordinated costumes. And the staging- oh, why does no one ever perform this play anymore?

The eventual reveal doesn’t make any more sense than the rest of the movie, but it’s still tremendously fun to watch. And I have made it my mission to make sure that every one of my friends sees it at least once. Either as a gesture of love or a form of torture. Beautiful French torture. With lesbians. Grade: B