Femmes Fatales

EIGHT WOMEN, FRANÇOIS OZON'S ODE TO LES FEMMES

The title is Eight Women, and that's also its selling point—eight great actresses, and French ones to boot. The breakdown: three legends (Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert), one possible future legend (Emmanuelle Beart), three relatively new faces (Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, Firmine Richard), and one grande dame (Danielle Darrieux). The director, Francois Ozon, is best known in the U.S. for last year's hushed Under the Sand. This one throws some elbows. The bitchy screenplay—a housebound whodunit—mouths off like what you might get if Clare Boothe Luce rewrote Agatha Christie. The real fun, as hysteria, catfights, and revelations of "sapphism" ensue, is in watching three-star dishes like Deneuve and Huppert pretend to be Joan Collins. Or possibly Charles Ludlam. The movie's press materials would have you believe it's some kind of salute to French womanhood, and maybe that's true, but its spirit is more drag show than Eric Rohmer, and the moral seems to be that les femmes would just as soon ball-bust as breathe. With loopy song-and-dance numbers and, here and there, improbable outbursts of genuine feeling. (Rating: ★★★)

B.H.