7 Women and a Murder

I was enjoying the movie. A cozy whodunit, with beautiful style. Cinematography, costume, setting, all beautiful. I guessed the culprit (or reduced it to 2) quite easily but I have seen "8 femmes", the French movie that inspired this one and, even if I do not completely remember it, I had an idea of what was going on.

Still, the actual ending makes no sense. No, no, no. It was irritating as hell to see that. It ruined which could have been a 9/10 movie. Now it is 6.5 for me, I rounded it to 6.

I do not have more to say but I need to reach the minimum of characters. Sorry for this silly line.

Few people know it,but Ozon's "huit femmes" is itself a remake ; a first version of Robert Thomas's play (also often performed on stage in the fifties) was filmed in black and white as 'la nuit des suspectes" (1957 ):this first effort was more pessimistic than Ozon 's whodunit cum musical comedy .

The Italian version jettisoned the songs -they were French and they should have been replaced by Italian hits ,had it been treated like in Ozon's pleasant work ;a director whose only daring gesture -not really risqué anymore at the time- was Ardant's lesbian character .

The Italian version kept it ; it is also enjoyable to see Ornella Vanoni ( a singer and co-star of Virna Lisi in "Romolo e Remo peplum) reprising the part of Danielle Darrieux .All the actresses overplay (they also did in the French color version ) which is not a real problem ; Thomas was certainly influenced by Agatha Christie's whodunits ;the situation -people locked up in a house surrounded by the snow- reminds you of her play "the mousetrap ".

I saw this on Netflix dubbed into American English. I could actually understand what the gals were saying which should have pleased me. It didn't because the bland AMURIKEN accents didn't match up with the rest of it. It was pretty dull. Lacked suspense. I think hearing the lovelyItalian language would have helped. I enjoyed that the women all wore vivid jewel tone dresses. It made them easy to tell apart. The sets were incredibly colorful. They were the best part.

For some reason, this movie is set at Christmas. It was lovely to see that the only Christmas decoration was a tree. So anti-Hallmark! I could live in Italy.

Occasionally a movie comes along that you take a chance on believing it may be better than reviewers have rated and it I am here to say that this is one of them. We had fun sitting down to an easy going mystery that made us laugh.

The character build up was excellent and every character had a reason to murder. I may have guessed the ending as we got near it, but that doesn't make the movie any less enjoyable. I hope that we see more movies like this in the future so we can watch something besides the glamours Hollywood style that has grown so tiresome. Some may call this movie silly, but I call it refreshing.

The visual was what drew me in. The color scheme is beautiful and it is obvious this is a play adapted to a movie. I havent heard of this before and Im glad I watched it. The story is a typical whodunit. I'm giving it a 6 because the story is a weak one. Nothing to do with the acting or the movie. The storyline is just weak. But no story is a waste of time. Why do we have to put so many words into a review? Nobody has reviewed yet so I'm trying to be nice and leave the first one! So what it comes down to, cute to watch but dont expect to be swept off your feet. Visuals get an A+ though. Hazzah!!