The Greatest Trick

The 8 Women of the title are all murder suspects. Marcel has been discovered stabbed in his bed in his country mansion (which is, of course, inescapable due to snow), and his sister, wife, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, housekeeper, maid and 2 daughters spend the next few hours solving the murder. And of course, revealing dark secrets about themselves that create an increasingly murky picture of their motives. And breaking into altered versions of French pop songs. You know, just to while away the time.

Actually, that’s one of the problems with this movie. Too much time is whiled away. The first hour is hilarious; the cream of France’s female acting talent (Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen among others) send themselves up marvellously in a deliberately creaky-plotted murder farce. Huppert in particular is astonishing to watch as the fast-talking, bitter and jealous sister Augustine, and Beart’s turn as the new maid is also good value for her questions and answers laced with double entendre in the accurately-translated sense of the phrase. But then, sadly, the humour turns to, well, sex. That is, there is only a little sexual activity on screen (and nothing overly explicit), but each character’s secrets revolve around sex in some way (which I consider to be a poor view of women, if that is the only type of secret you can assign to them), and many less pleasant than you might want to hear about. You then begin to realise that there’s still one major 20 minute scene still to come (you know, the one where everything about the murder is revealed) and you start to long for it. Shame really, because the movie has plenty of other qualities too.

Each woman is dressed in a particular colour, referring neatly to Cluedo; one daughter in chic pink, Marcel’s sister in slutty red, the hired help in black and white of course etc. It’s a fun little element of a fairly throwaway film, but it helps you know who is who too! The songs are a most unexpected addition when they first appear, and most of them are fun as well, but with a ‘faintly pointless’ warning attached (except for the first one; that’s superb). Oh, and it’s quite clear that Deneuve is the only one who can actually carry a tune! And I know I mentioned it earlier, but it’s unbelievable that director Francois Ozon managed to get all these actresses on the same set at the same time for enough time to shoot the film! I’m sure there will be some readers who haven’t heard of a single one of them, but in the French film world this cast was a major coup. It’s just a shame that these women weren’t given a comedy / mystery / musical of higher calibre to star in.