8 Women: A love-it-or-hate-it film starring eight of France's most beloved actresses that got Europe buzzing and is coming to America now

Interview, Sept, 2002 by Joan Dupont

Pile France's most glamorous actresses into a house set in the snowy countryside, murder the head of the household in his bed and watch the eight women in his life sniff and snarl, and--in the middle of an hour-long catfight--break into song and dance.

Most of the songs are maudlin French pop numbers from the '60s, but they soar into postmodern musical comedy, belted out by these grandes dames: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Danielle Darrieux, Firmine Richard, Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier--three generations upstaging each other with fatal beauty and towering narcissism, unusual suspects in a woolly whodunit.

Francois Ozon's 8 Women is the phenomenon that made headlines even before it came out last winter in France, where it became the love-it-or-hate-it movie of the season. And the director has no illusions as to why: "I wanted to do a remake of Claire Booth Luce's The Women, but this story isn't that interesting--casting these stars made it interesting."

Ozon knows how to play silly putty with any genre. He has done musical camp before, in 1999's Water Drops on Burning Rocks (adapted from a Fassbinder play); he turned the sedate Under the Sand--starring Charlotte Rampling--into a stylish ghost story, a hit that won the great eight over to 8 Women.

The only actress of the A-list ensemble Ozon knew before the shoot was Sagnier, who plays the bratty little sister who unravels the mystery at film's end. "Ludivine suffered on the set because I had to take care of the others, but I promised her revenge in the last scene."

And she can savor her victory: She stars, with Rampling, in Ozon's upcoming Swimming Pool. "I only have two women in that one," the director says. "I thought it might be easier than eight."

Joan Dupont is a Paris-based writer and frequent Interview contributor.