A great cast (obviously) and I appreciate the deliberate homage to mid-20th century melodrama.

A great cast (obviously) and I appreciate the deliberate homage to mid-20th century melodrama.

Beautifully stylised and stuffed full with the best French actresses of several generations the film is first and foremost the celebration of these brilliant performers paying tribute to their careers and legacy. Therefore the artificiality of the story should not confuse you, it is not a plot-centred movie. It is a movie about beauty, as all of the Ozon's are.

Nope. Supposed to be a dark comedy, à la “Clue”, but has horrible musical interludes, terrible dialogue, lots of gratuitous cat-fighting and awkward gratuitous close lesbian inferences. Not funny, not intriguing, quite annoying.

I have to imagine that the target audience for 8 Women is remarkably small. There are so many genres thrown together that finding someone who enjoys them all is going to be tough. This movie is a family drama, a romantic drama, a murder mystery, a period piece, a chamber piece, a comedy, and a musical (there might be more genres in there but these are the most obvious.). Yet, even if the target audience is tiny, it seems I fit within that narrow demographic. I quite enjoyed 8 Women, because it kept getting more wacky as it went. There are movies where I am intrigued because I don’t know what the plot will do next, but this was a movie where I didn’t even know what the filmmakers would do next. For all I knew, we were mere minutes away from big space aliens walking into the room and abducting some of the women. I won’t say that 8 Women was totally successful at everything it tried, because I struggled with some aspects. The mystery never felt like one you could figure out yourself, instead they just kept layering on more and more reveals to make it clear everybody was hiding something. I also found the ending to be a bit frustrating. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll say the reveal of the truth in the muder mystery was satisfying, but then there was a final twist that left me a bit sad instead of smiling like I had so much before that. Otherwise, I thought 8 Women was a delight. The vibrant colors in the costumes and sets were playful and fun, plus they worked well for the musical numbers. The actresses were all wonderful, and it was enjoyable to see a number of familiar faces in the cast. I won’t say 8 Women is perfect, but it’s weird how well it all works as a cohesive film.

How can I say this ,,,,. A mysterious pleasant sensation that watched the horrible thing. Window frame, color usage, costume, song, dance! It is far from the elegance of Jacques Demy, but it wins with power.

a very very very very good and funny movie !

This was a really entertaining movie,full of imagination and amazing one-liners. The best thing about this French dark comedy was the exceptional cast and the amazing female characters they portrayed. The musical scenes were either very good and quite fitting or they managed to ruin the moment. Overall it was quite fun and pretty interesting but the finale saddly managed to disappoint.

An all female cast with France's most outstanding actresses of the past fifty years in this comedy musical "who done it" set in an isolated country home. This is pure style but with the substance and one of my guilty pleasures.

The colors are beautiful. But this is the only thing I like of this film. The songs are quite annoying, overall, quite boring. Ozon can make much better, he made much better.

If you're a fan of French Film and Film Musical it is impossible that you will not enjoy this send-up / homage to Douglas Sirk. One can only imagine the stories from behind the scenes of the making of this film.

Awesome.....the exemplification of most type of women and their relation to a man

saw this when first released and didn't pay much attention to it. But seeing it again, almost a decade later, it resonates in a way it didn't then as it became clear to me that it's a farce composed of only females (rare for farce) and the operaettic bursts of song really work -- especially the last. Just really liked it a lot second time round - but it only gets force towards the end.

Racy, yes. Shocking, not exactly. After all, who hasn't seen French chicks doing the naughties..you kind of expect it, even if its from the very dignified Catherine Deneuve. Could do without the chorus line tho.

Fantastic. Funny, sad, moving, scary,sweet and thought-provoking dance through a women's mind, French to the core. There's a smart, stylish twist at every turn.But beware: you will probably either love or hate it.

Great performance but it lacks depth.

good murder mystery from france deneuve is a real force of nature here

"IN A HOUSE FULL OF WOMEN, THE ONLY MAN GETS MURDERED" - '8 Femmes' is a French musical murder mystery from 2002 by director Françios Ozon (Dans la Maison). Although it takes a bit of time to get used to the French songs and I suspect a female audience will find this more appealing, I really like this movie and the twist in the end. In Agatha Christie style- whodunit storyline we try to find a murderer among eight colorful women, doing so we learn each of them carries a dark secret. This film features the crème de la crème of French actresses: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppart, Emmanuelle Béart (Mission: Impossible), Danielle Darieux, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier and Firmine Richard. Who killed the only man in the house? On a snowy winter morning in a isolated countryside mansion in France, the man of the house is found dead in his bed with a knife still sticking in his back. Because of the weather, the killer can only be one of the people in the house. Was it his stylish wife Gaby (Deneuve)? His spinster sister-in-law Augustine (Huppart)? His alcoholic mother-in-law Mamy (Darieux)? His perfectlyseeming eldest daughter Suzon (Ledoyen)? Or his youngest tomcat daughter Catherine (Sagnier)? Perhaps Madam Chanel (Richard) the cook had reason to get rid of him? Or maybe it was the sexy housemaid Louise (Béart)? While the woman try to find out what happened, another person shows up at their doorstep: Prostitute Pierrette (Ardant) who claims to be the victim's sister. Could she be the murderer? In order to solve the case each of the eight women will have to unravel their darkest secret.

Women in all their sexy, glamorous, secretive, selfish, deceptive, glory. Made even more wonderful by the clothes, the hair, and the gorgeousness of each and every one of the women. I could almost smell the heady scent of No 5, cigarette smoke, and wine. And to top it all off - in French! With beautiful French music. Utter bliss.

8 Femmes is a high camp romp that is all about the ensemble cast of three generations of great French actresses, from an 84-year old Danielle Darrieux to a 22-year old Ludivine Sagnier, and that includes world stars Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, and Emmanuelle Beart. Based on the eponymous 1958 play by Robert Thomas, the story is a familiar derivation of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Marcel, the head of a wealthy country household, is murdered. The eight women in his life - his wife (Deneuve), two daughters (Virginie Ledoyan and Sagnier), sister (Fanny Ardant), mother- (Darrieux) and sister-in-law (Huppert), chambermaid (Beart) and cook (Firmine Richard) - are trapped together in the chateau by sabotage and a snowstorm. Unable to contact the police, they set about trying to deduce which of them is the murderer. Lies are told; secrets are revealed; alliances are made and broken; and in the end there is a surprising double twist. As a murder mystery, the plot is hardly worthy of, say, Anthony Shaffer. But the plot is not the point, as you realise when the cast first (and entirely unexpectedly) breaks into song. This is not a garden variety country house thriller: This is no-holds-barred family politics, packaged as a tongue-in-cheek imitation of 1950s glam entertainment. Sit back, and enjoy the snappy interaction among the leads, and the gradual revelation of their characters' desires, their petty jealousies, and the gambits they use and have used, against each other and against Marcel, to get what they want. It is occasionally clumsy, always campy, and you might roll your eyes now and then at a particular bit of silliness. But 8 Femmes is worth the ride.