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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
If you find yourself in need of a tonic in the coming weeks, and discover that a close friend has stolen your copy of "Singin' in the Rain," you could do worse than plan a trip to "8 Women." Francois Ozon's new picture is a tonic of sorts, but you should be warned that at no time does it taste anything other than most peculiar. Put simply, it is a cocktail: a hot-hued, postmodern, nineteen-fifties murder-mystery musical hen party. You may be left with doubts about Ozon as a director, but one thing is for sure: he'd make a hell of a bartender.
The setting is virginal and unashamedly fake--purest Agatha Christie. The hush of a snowbound country house, where deer nibble foliage on cue, is broken by the small matter of a murder (some male of the species named Marcel, who really doesn't count), and also, more important, by a volcanic irruption: the arrival, from nowhere, of a vast, untamable horde of famous French actresses. Each is playing a part, of course, and the rapport between their various personae will form the emotional clutter of the film, yet we are constantly reminded--it would be a grievous breach of etiquette if we dared to forget--that what we are gazing at is a constellation.
The wise thing, I guess, is to name...
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