8 1/2 Women (2000)
I'm a huge fan of director Peter Greenaway and I've always appreciated his artful excesses. Love him or hate him, there's no one else who comes close to doing the original work he does. There are many out there who’ve detested his other films such as Drowning By Numbers, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and Prospero's Books, but I find them immensely difficult and rewarding, always a feast for the eyes and the brain. But then there's his newest film, 8 1/2 Women, which is basically the insipid, pretentious twaddle his critics only THOUGHT his other films were.
What is there to say? 8 1/2 Women is an aggravating, empty experience. Greenaway is known for his inventive visual sense and his weirdly intricate plots, but usually his excessive qualities have a clear point and are thematic in how they related to the story. Here, since there really is no feal story to speak of, the weirdness is simply that, weird. This weirdness only serves to further distance the audience from its already completely confused and uninvolving story.
What is this story, you ask? A British father and son living in Switzerland who, after the death of the wife/mother, deal with their grief by turning their mansion into a private brothel. While watching Federico Fellini's 8 ½, they are inspired to gather various women for their own private pleasures. Good enough, I suppose.
The story begins after the mother's death. It is alluded to that the father and son have sex with each other as some sort of bizarre version of a grief counseling session. The first addition to their brood is a Japanese woman who bribed into going along with them in order to pay off her gambling debt. Next to join is a depressed, wannabe geisha girl who longs to be as feminine as a female impersonator (don't ask.) And so on.
There is an ex-nun, played by Toni Collette (who should have a long talk with her agent) hot off her Oscar nomination in The Sixth Sense, a Swiss woman who is only happy when she's pregnant, a horse-thief in a back brace, played by Amanda Plummer,, a Japanese lawyer (Vivan Wu), a British, ball-busting party girl, and a woman without any legs (she's the half-woman), etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, there are long stretches of dialogue that doesn't amount to anything insightful, occasionally peppered with bizarre and pointless imagery. If you long to see a naked Amanda Plummer sitting on a bench while she bathing a giant pig, be my guest. Also, Toni Collette at one point sheds all her clothes and stands naked wearing only a wimple and showing off her shaved crotch.
Of course, none of these women are to provide an adequate answer for these grieving men. As in most of Greenaway's films, there is a death at the end that somehow, but not quite, brings a kind of closure, if you can call it that, to a boring, slow, purposeless story.
8 1/2 Women is equal parts dull and downright embarrassing. Peter Greenaway is a great director, but this time none of the elements come together, and the film only serves as a comparison piece for his much greater body of work.
What is there to say? 8 1/2 Women is an aggravating, empty experience. Greenaway is known for his inventive visual sense and his weirdly intricate plots, but usually his excessive qualities have a clear point and are thematic in how they related to the story. Here, since there really is no feal story to speak of, the weirdness is simply that, weird. This weirdness only serves to further distance the audience from its already completely confused and uninvolving story.
What is this story, you ask? A British father and son living in Switzerland who, after the death of the wife/mother, deal with their grief by turning their mansion into a private brothel. While watching Federico Fellini's 8 ½, they are inspired to gather various women for their own private pleasures. Good enough, I suppose.
The story begins after the mother's death. It is alluded to that the father and son have sex with each other as some sort of bizarre version of a grief counseling session. The first addition to their brood is a Japanese woman who bribed into going along with them in order to pay off her gambling debt. Next to join is a depressed, wannabe geisha girl who longs to be as feminine as a female impersonator (don't ask.) And so on.
There is an ex-nun, played by Toni Collette (who should have a long talk with her agent) hot off her Oscar nomination in The Sixth Sense, a Swiss woman who is only happy when she's pregnant, a horse-thief in a back brace, played by Amanda Plummer,, a Japanese lawyer (Vivan Wu), a British, ball-busting party girl, and a woman without any legs (she's the half-woman), etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, there are long stretches of dialogue that doesn't amount to anything insightful, occasionally peppered with bizarre and pointless imagery. If you long to see a naked Amanda Plummer sitting on a bench while she bathing a giant pig, be my guest. Also, Toni Collette at one point sheds all her clothes and stands naked wearing only a wimple and showing off her shaved crotch.
Of course, none of these women are to provide an adequate answer for these grieving men. As in most of Greenaway's films, there is a death at the end that somehow, but not quite, brings a kind of closure, if you can call it that, to a boring, slow, purposeless story.
8 1/2 Women is equal parts dull and downright embarrassing. Peter Greenaway is a great director, but this time none of the elements come together, and the film only serves as a comparison piece for his much greater body of work.
