(out of four)
By David N. Butterworth
Numbers count for everything in a Peter Greenaway film.
In his brilliant feature debut The Falls, 92 biographies of the survivors of a
violent, unknown event are outlined with meticulous and loving detail. In Drowning by
Numbers, the integers 1 through 100 flow through the film, pinned to trees and tin
baths, painted on buildings, cows, and passers-by. In The Baby of Mācon, Julia
Ormond's character is raped 217 times.
And Greenaway's latest film is called 8 1/2 Women.
Numerology is just one of the eclectic British director's many obsessions and here, for
perhaps the first time, the numerical allusion isn't oblique–it's a direct reference
to Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. "How many film directors make films to satisfy
their sexual fantasies?" queries one of the film's leading men during a screening of
Fellini's masterpiece. It's a rare and telling admission from Greenaway–if only 8
1/2 Women were his masterpiece. Unfortunately, the director's latest cinematic
put-on leaves a lot to be desired.
But back to the question about filmmakers and fantasies...
Just as Robert Altman was able to convince Madeleine Stowe, Frances McDormand, Julianne
Moore (and Huey Lewis!) to bare all in his 1993 film Short Cuts, so too does
Greenaway have Toni Collette, Amanda Plummer, Polly Walker (and John Standing!) parade
around in the altogether in 8 1/2 Women. Few filmmakers are as successful in
celebrating the naked human form than Greenaway, since the director–a
classically-trained painter–has always compared the nudity in his films to the role
of the nude in Art. Think Walker as a Botticelli angel.
In 8 1/2 Women, there's room and then some for Greenaway's elaborate detailing,
intellectual hypothesizing, and preponderance of naughty bits. A Swiss banker's wife dies
leaving him emotionally paralyzed and sexually unfulfilled (Standing plays the banker).
Inspired by a screening of 8 1/2, the banker's cocksure son (an irritating Matthew
Delamere) convinces his father to populate his lavish Geneva estate with concubines to
bring his dreams to life. This the banker does–among the women a mother, a whore, a
nun, and an amputee (the "half" of the title)–yet he soon comes to
recognize the darker, more disturbing side to fantasy.
8 1/2 Women is a Greenaway film through and through–intriguing to fans and
maddening to the uninitiated–but the pieces of his latest puzzle never seem to come
together in any satisfying way. The writing is too obviously designed to shock, the sexism
too overt (this might well be Greenaway's most misogynistic film since 1985's A Zed and
Two Noughts), and the structure too self-consciously convoluted. There are hints and
reminders of greatness, such as the overlays introducing each sequence, bird calls on the
soundtrack (a throwback to the ornithological excesses of The Falls?), and a kinky
scene in which our protagonists sniff handfuls of Toni Collette's recently shorn hair.
But the picture feels incomplete, rushed, and half-hearted–for every wonderfully
constructed scene and priceless interchange of dialogue there are awkward moments and
stilted sequences which go nowhere.
A mediocre Greenaway film still stands head and shoulders above your standard Hollywood
fare, but as films of this talented filmmaker go, 8 1/2 Women proves a huge
disappointment.
