8 1/2 WOMEN (1999)
"How many film directors make films to satisfy their sexual fantasies?"
3 out of ****
Starring John Standing, Matthew Delamere, Vivian Wu, Polly Walker; Written & Directed by Peter Greenaway; Cinematography by Sacha Vierny
Like all of Peter Greenaway's movies, 8 1/2 WOMEN is founded on an intellectual conceit which is, in theory, intriguing and suggestive. Unlike most of them, though, it fails to find a structure which can shape and elaborate its central conceit. What we are left with, in practice, is a movie which is often intriguing, often suggestive, never cohesive.
The premise is this: after the death of his wife, Philip Emmenthal (John Standing) and his son Storey (Matthew Delamere), inspired by the famous harem scene in Fellini's 8 1/2, decide to turn their Swiss mansion into a harem. There they keep 8 1/2 women, with whom they act out their sexual fantasies, only to discover that they are unable to govern those fantasies: the women's inclinations, sexual and otherwise, are too much for the two men to handle. Soon the balance of power in the harem has shifted.
It is played as intellectual farce, which means that it avoids the obvious humour, but, by the same token, isn't all that funny. We begin in Japan, where the Emmenthals and their assistant Kito (Vivian Wu) are inking a deal with a Japanese businessman, who is signing over 8 1/2 pachinko parlours to discharge a substantial debt. Philip then returns to Geneva; a short time later, his wife dies. During his period of mourning, he wonders if his devotion to his rather passive spouse denied him the opportunity for sensual experimentation for all those years of marriage. Storey, sympathetic, offers his father access to his new Japanese girlfriend as a kind of filial gesture--the father and son have, to put it mildly, a rather uninhibited relationship with respect to sexual matters.
Events proceed from there according to the film's perverse logic, until the Emmenthals have stocked their household with an assortment of strange women, including a Japanese who wants to be a female impersonator so she can appear more feminine than she already is (BULLET BALLET's Kirina Maso); a self-possessed, opportunistic woman who cheerfully negotiates the terms of her own sexual indenturement (ENCHANTED APRIL's Polly Walker); and an injured horse thief who keeps a pet pig of whom she is perhaps unnaturally fond (PULP FICTION's Amanda Plummer). Greenaway scrupulously avoids taking a straightforward approach to the material--the women at first seem to represent male-constructed stereotypes (nun, prostitute, mother, etc.), but are in fact much more complex and vital.
The typical Greenaway film uses a single location and/or structuring device--the zoo in A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS, _The Tempest_ in PROSPERO'S BOOKS, and so on--to provide a framework for the web of visual quotes, historical references, interlocking metaphors and schematic plotting which makes up his work. In 8 1/2 WOMEN, however, the framework (and the visual scheme inspired by it) is not nearly as rigorous. There are some of the usual geometric parallels--8 1/2 pachinko parlours; Fellini's 8 1/2; 8 1/2 women--but these are surface decorations, not guiding principles. Much of the film in fact seems digressive and unnecessary, like a scene in which two servants discuss sexual deviance, or a mildly amusing sequence in which Philip is refused entrance to his wife's funeral because he has worn white, and has to switch clothes--in broad daylight--with his black-clad retinue so that he can attend.
The film's visual texture is lavish and baroquely inventive by anyone else's standards--fastidious attention is devoted to the sets, costumes, art design, and lighting--but for Greenaway it represents a kind of minimalism. Many elements characteristic of his work are gone or downplayed: the stately tracking shots, the use of multiple frames, the striking music. These are replaced by visual tricks which sometimes seem like empty contrivance. A methodical alternating series of close-ups and long-shots of Philip and Storey seated by an indoor pool, for example, is distracting and self-conscious. Greenaway's tactics are always self-conscious, but here it serves no purpose.
Nevertheless, Greenaway and his longtime cinematographer Sacha Vierny provide us with an abundance of diverting images. A Japanese dancer poses in the Emmenthals' courtyard, daintily manipulating her fan, while her movements are partly obscured by a huge pink pig in the foreground. A nude woman rides a horse bareback across a bright green meadow. Two naked men sign a document in the middle of a gaudy pachinko parlour while the resident gamblers look on soberly. The movie's nonchalant dismissal of convention is refreshing. Still, there are signs that the enfant terrible is mellowing: the single most transgressive act in the movie--consensual father-son incest--takes place off-screen.
There is much to admire in 8 1/2 WOMEN, however discursive and long-winded it might be. The intricate ambivalence of the movie's "meaning" offers a welcome contrast to the transparent motives and methods of most mainstream cinema. However, the convoluted, paradoxical ironies that weave their way through the film do tend to cancel each other out. Reflections on sex, death, gender, art and the body are offered and then forgotten; their meaning is not amplified as the movie progresses. We are left, in the end, with little more than postmodern artifice: clever, provocative, and self-defeating.
Subjective Camera (subjective.freeservers.com) Movie Reviews by David Dalgleish (daviddalgleish@yahoo.com)
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