8 Women

Filmed in a manner that its target admirers will no doubt describe as ‘sumptuous’, François Ozon’s curious French musical-cum-murder-mystery, though typically stylised and shallow, utilises its formidable cast of established Gallic screen divas to impressive effect.

A gaggle of yammering upper-class French ladies cooped up together in the one building, and bursting into song every few minutes, may or may not be your idea of perfect company – in the cinema or anywhere else – but 8 Women , though hardly to everyone’s tastes, has enough rancorous wit about it to pass the time acceptably.

The set-up seems on first inspection to be straight out of vintage Agatha Christie, but soon unfolds into something surprisingly light-hearted and kitsch. Eight bickering (and singing) female relatives re-unite in a large sinister mansion in the middle of nowhere, their patriarch having been mysteriously dispatched, and the levels of hysteria in the house proceed to go through the proverbial roof on more than one occasion.

The songs themselves, to these ears, were often an annoyance and a distraction from the drama, but as all-singing all-dancing affairs go, this is less irritating than most. 8 Women rarely rises to memorable levels, but it’s colourful, theatrical and original enough to qualify as requisite viewing for cine-Francophiles, and an optional diversion for everyone else.