8 Women

François Ozon’s slight, campy, bubbly vision of a sort of French Agatha Christie mystery-musical set in the 1950s is a smorgasbord of gnarled relationships, confessions and tainted pasts. Eight women are trapped at a country mansion during the winter. The only man on the premises is lying upstairs with a large knife protruding from his back. In the living room below, his wife and their two daughters, his wife’s sister and mom, his sister, a chambermaid and a housekeeper gather and attempt to filter out murder suspects. They bitch, bicker, console, catfight, scheme, flirt, smooch and sing their way through numerous possible motives, bared secrets, agendas and battered egos. The result: frothy, racy frivolity starring such French all-stars as Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuelle Béart.