8 1/2 WOMEN (director/writer: Peter Greenaway; cinematographer: Sacha Vierny; editor: Elmer Leupen; cast: John Standing (Philip Emmenthal), Matthew Delamere (Storey Emmenthal), Polly Walker (Palmira), Amanda Plummer (Beryl), Toni Collette (Griselda), Kirina Mano (Mio), Vivian Wu (Kito), Natacha Amal (Giaconda), Giulietta (Manna Fujiwara); Runtime: 122; Lions Gate Films; 1999-Netherlands/UK/Ger/Lux)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
It's possible for Peter Greeaway ("Drowning by Numbers"/ "A Zed and Two Noughts"/``Prospero's Books'') to make a more boring sexual/erotic fantasy film, one that is more didactic and analytical, but not likely that he could duplicate one that is also so full of itself as this one was. It is the director's audacious opinion that he can get away without having a story to go with the full frontal nudity display of men and women he flaunts throughout the film. It results in a torturous viewing experience, as pablum is spouted in verbose spurts of emotive stagy responses, while the reward for the viewer is a few stilted visual delights and a few restrained chuckles to be had at the absurdity of all the perversity. The film defies social conventions and commercial filmmaking sensibilities, something Greenaway has built a reputation on, as his films are critic-proof, playing to art-house audience types who relish his deft camerawork and the cerebral challenges his films pose as puzzlers.
A wealthy 55-year-old Swiss businessman Philip Emmenthal (John Standing), the director's alter ego for the film, has just become a widow and grieves his wife's death by wondering who's going to hold and love me now for my body. He wants someone to hold him, and to the rescue comes his narcissistic thirtysomething son Storey (Matthew Delamere), who gets into bed with him for some tender incest. The two bond further by trading sexual fantasies: Storey's is that he's in love with his own penis ever since he was a child and looked at himself in a double mirror. The old man responds to his kid's fantasty, by telling him that he should get a woman to kiss his dick.
After he goes to the cinema with his son and sees Fellini's 8 1/2 (an overated film that the passage of time has been unkind to), and watches Mastroianni setting up a harem of women, this gives the son an idea on how he can console his father, as he copies the film, setting up a harem in their Swiss estate. After viewing the film again on video, the son begins collecting the 8 1/2 women -- the half is an amputee bound in a wheelchair named Giulietta (Manna Fujiwara) -- Is her name an homage to Fellini's wife? If so, what a left-handed honor is bestown on Fellini! The father's response to the film is, "How many film directors make films to satisfy their sexual fantasies?" The son says -- "most of them." Which is about the best way of explaining what this very personal film means for Greenaway.
The film revolves around the woman collected, as the location of the story moves from Kyoto, Japan, where the father closes a deal on pachinko parlors (pinball games), to different parts of Europe. In Kyoto, Kito (Vivian Wu) is a repressed and headstrong business woman on their staff. She engineered their real-estate deals in Japan and helps them collect the Asian women. The women collected who make some kind of impression include a compulsive pachinko player (Shizuka Inoh) who gets in gambling debt, thereby selling her body to Storey to cancel the debt, with her approving husband by her side; Mio (Kirina Mano), a female impersonator who happens to be female; a bizarre, horsewoman thief (Amanda Plummer), in a neck brace and facially made up like Joel Grey was in "Cabaret," who loves horses and sleeps with a pig; Griselda (Collette), who is a Norwegian bankteller and a wannabe nun; a greedy baby-making entrepenaur Giaconda (Natacha Amal) who sells her newborn babies for as high as $25,000; and, best of all, the only performance worth talking about in the film, the scheming Palmira (Polly Walker) as the adventurous libertine, willing to sell her voluptious body to Philip (she looks great in the nude). She is, of course, by the nature of the film, more attracted to Philip's aging, decrepit body than she is to his son's healthy and vital one.
The film didn't mean much to me, but it did say something about how women understand sex better than men and men are such children when it comes to sex. It brought up things that are taboo and showed how art is a metaphor for one's obsessions in sex. The film felt so much like attending a tedious college lecture in a Fellini 101 course in perversity as expounded by the arid Professor Greenaway, that it turned into an anti-erotic movie, a text book type of film where you can bring in all sorts of intellectual things that weren't developed in the film, but were only hinted at, and thereby there will always be something perceived about the film to justify it as an erstwhile effort.
REVIEWED ON 10/15/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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