François Ozon's 8 Femmes | 8 Women (2002)

8 Femmes is a major film of François Ozon's, originally intended as a remake of George Cukor's The Women of 1939 until that attempt proved unsuccessful, and then a Robert Thomas 1960s play was adopted, from which Ozon very freely worked to produce a kind of melodrama, or detective story, or (in parts) a musical with a strong eye on the works of Cukor, Hitchcock, Sirk, and so on.

Furthermore, 8 Femmes is a mark of Ozon's maturity as at the age of thirty-four he has gathered such icons as Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardent, Emmanuelle Béart and Darielle Darrieux, plus Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine and Firmine Richard to make up the eight women. Ozon was obviously happy working with women, and stated that a film called 8 Hommes would not have been possible for him.

Without going into the details of the plot of the film (which would take up a lot of space) this is not the usual entertainment fare: it's about what initially appears to be a murder of a man by any of eight women, and each woman has her secrets, any of the eight could be the murderer. So far so Agatha Christie, say, but this is no Agatha Christie mystery.

This is more like a murder mystery without a real murder plot, in fact there is only the thinnest of plots here, or rather a fake plot (McGuffin?) drives the action. Gender intrigue this is, but with relevant songs through the decades to punctuate what is happening or felt. And there is also adultery, lesbianism, violence, intimations of incest, whatever you like. This is a film set in the 1950s which delights in its transgression, and is probably one of the most complex, if not the most complex, that Ozon had done before.