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8 Women
EMAILPRINTFocus Features / USA Films

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Mystery
Written by:
François Ozon
Marina de Van
Robert Thomas (play 8 femmes)
Directed by: François Ozon
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 20, 2002
DVD: February 11, 2003
Running Time: 113 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: R for some sexual content
Starring Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, and Firmine Richard and Dominique Lamure
When a wealthy French family gathers for Christmas, their country estate is thrown into an uproar when the father of the family is murdered. The only possible suspects are the eight women in the house, each of whom has secrets and a motive to kill him.
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel
So original, so funny, so alive with drama, intrigue, mystery and colors that you want to see it again and again.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The secret to enjoying 8 Women is to check your analytical mind at the popcorn counter and settle back for almost two hours of cinematic mischief.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Really, really good -- Yes, it's over the top, giddy and parodistic (God bless it). But it also takes a thoughtful, if surreptitious, look at what eight women might act like when men aren't around.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
One of the most uplifting and delightful films to have come along this year.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
If you simply love Vogue magazine, you'll love 8 Women just as much as the cinematically educated. This breezy entertainment often feels like an exquisitely photographed fashion layout come to life.
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Whatever you call this one-of-a-kind bonbon spiked with wit and malice, it's classic oo-la-la.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf
It's pretty safe to say that claustrophobic, gay-themed murder mysteries haven't been this much fun since "Deathtrap."
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The dazzling star power of the French screen royalty Ozon has assembled and the film's sheer exuberance in its own artifice make this a delight from beginning to end.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
In short, this film is not quite the frozen and brittle comedy that it appears to be, and, if you can stomach it the first time, you may experience a baffling wish to see it again -- to inspect this crystalline curiosity from another angle. [16 September 2002, p. 106]
Time Richard Corliss
Seduction is more important than deduction in this chic display of star quality to the eighth power.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Loren King
An ebullient toast to grande dames: part homage, part camp, all artifice and a thoroughly entertaining, if light, confection.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
A frothy and deliriously enjoyable souffle.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Even if some of the references are inscrutable, a lot of 8 Women is a riot. Here and there Ozon finds the key to a level of farce that would have amused Bunuel himself.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
May not plumb the depths of the female psyche, but it's stylish and frivolous in the most profound ways.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The result is weightless entertainment that's both camp and true, a warped adoration of star-quality actresses as amazing creatures who can project the lives of fictional characters as well as the essence of their own fabulous selves.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The movie doesn't remind me so much of the movies of Minnelli or Sirk as it does a lavish parody of "Upstairs, Downstairs," with musical interludes (the divas sing, whether they can or not) that are often as painful to watch as they are audaciously performed.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Movies like 8 Women are essentially made for movie-lovers. You have to have seen overdecorated studio musicals, and you have to know who Darrieux and Deneuve and Beart and Huppert and Ardant are, to get the full flavor. It also helps if you have seen Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap."
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Intoxicates and overwhelms at the same time, giving off so much pleasure in a small space that the effect can be suffocating.
Read Full Review >Variety Lisa Nesselson
For all its careful plotting, some viewers may find the exercise ultimately hollow and nasty, but thesps make the experience completely worthwhile.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The cast is the main attraction in Francois Ozon's witty, even touching 8 Women.
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A gorgeous, if disjointed, spectacle, made endurable if not entirely comprehensible by its eye-popping cast.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Indefensible, cynical, even grotesque; it is also pure -- that is to say innocent and uncorrupted -- fun.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Proves to be a pleasant romp. Girls just wanna have fun -- even onscreen.
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Imagine the John Waters remake of an Agatha Christie mystery directed by Douglas Sirk, and you'll get some idea of the tone of this retro musical melodrama, which features a cast whose combined wattage could eclipse a small solar system.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
Although it starts off vaguely amusing, 8 Women grows progressively sour, curdled by the filmmakers' bad faith and lack of compassion. It isn't just the tone that's off; it's the point.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Without its cast -- the cream of France's female acting elite -- François Ozon's ambivalent musical-comedy homage to the 1950s wouldn't be much.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
iIt sits on the screen in the flattest way imaginable, and the brightest colors in the world can't make up for all that's missing. 8 Women is perfumed kitsch, and it reeks.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
8 Women would probably be a looser, giddier salute to show-biz ideas of femininity if it were performed by eight drag queens.
New York Post Jonathan Foreman
The result is inept, tedious kitsch that even at its best feels like John Waters minus the joie de vivre.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
For all the tumultuous entrances and flouncing exits, the eight principals manage maybe three laughs among them.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Horace S. gave it a1:
Boring and tedious. I fast-forwarded during the ludicrous musical numbers after enduring the first few. Deneuve looks like hell. What a relief when it was over.
Kalen J. gave it a2:
Quite atrocious really. Overacted, and not entertaining enough to make you want to suspend disbelief, which the characters and plot demand. Why do reviewers lower their standards so much, just because a movie has subtitles?
Thomas E. gave it a 10:
Really entertaining. The best actors to ever grace the screen together. only the ending is below brilliant.
Andrej P. gave it a 10:
Ozon's witty subversion of classic film conventions and genres, including the '50s Technicolor musical, soap operas and whodunit mysteries - which could have easliy turned out a gaudy mess, but instead is as carefully coordinated as the obviously Dior-inspired costumes - together with the eight women's perfectly pitched and balanced performances, renders this, in my opinion, one of the most original recent movies. It is full of irony and intrigue and has a constantly unfurling, twisting and sometimes shocking plot, with each character featured in an emotional and defining musical interlude. Each secret that is revealed adds another level of paradoxical lunacy and dysfunctionality to the '50s bourgeois artifice that provides the movie's theatrical backdrop. All in all, a lot of fun, one that I'm definitely getting on dvd to own!
Alexis S. gave it a 3:
Really, really bad! Could only tolerate 24 minutes--Hollywood Video wouldn't give me my money back and I'm really pissed about it. Boyfriend didn't like it either!
Kathy H. gave it a 4:
A film that makes you attracted with an enchanting title, mystery genre and such fabulous actresses! In contrast it will make you confronted with a total disappointment. The plot is good but the time to time singings is quite out of tune for the movie! I do not recommand it at all and I wonder how such great actoresses like Cathrine Deneuve have apeared in such a banal movie.
