8 Women

Director: François Ozon

2002 / 111min / 35mm

A wealthy industrialist turns up dead in a house filled for the holidays with females, family relations and “the help” both, and each of the eight ladies—wife, sister, daughters, mother- and sister-in-law, cook, and maid—is now a suspect in a murder. Based on a 1958 play by Robert Thomas that takes place in the period it was written, Ozon’s delightfully daffy, lavishly decorated musical whodunnit brings together a multigenerational who’s who of French actresses: Catharine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart, Virginie Ledoyen, Danielle Darrieux, Ludivine Sagnier, and Firmine Richard. And even more remarkable? It doesn’t waste a single one of them!