8 ½ Women

I went in expecting the worst and left completely turned around. 8 1/2 Women doesn't hold a candle to The Pillow Book, The Cook the Thief..., or his earlier Drowning By Numbers, but I had fun! It was almost like Peter Greenaway does Woody Allen (wanna talk about film makers who purge their sexual fantasies on screen!) With the exception of a couple of scenes, the visual style of this film is stark and simple (much like Drowning...) and relied heavily on smart dialogue, which at times got a bit over the top, intellectually speaking, but kept the film going. I never got bored with it, I never got too disgusted, and even if I can't recommend it to most of the people I know, I still feel it's a strong feature.

Now, even though this is Greenaway Lite, it still isn't for people who didn't like any of his earlier films. But even if you only liked The Cook The Thief, you should give this one a chance. Forget that you have hang ups about sex and sit back and watch the perversion unfold! Pure, sick fun!

John Standing plays Philip Emmenthal, a banker who has just gained control of some pachinko parlours. His odd son Storey is looking after them in Japan, while Philip resides in his mansion in Geneva. When Philip's wife dies, he tells Storey to return to Geneva to console him. While there, Storey takes Philip to see Felini's 8 1/2, and it gives them both an inspiration to use their mansion as a bordello. They go back to Japan and bring an assortment of women back to the mansion.

The women are all unusual. One of them, a nun, has her head shaved and speaks in a weird Dutch-sounding language. Another one keeps getting pregnant. One falls off her horse. One has a huge pet pig. Storey, and especially Philip, have both found a new lease of life. There are plenty of nude bodies on show, although hardly any sex. The two men continually talk about penises. Greenaway seems to have indulged himself in this film with sexual wallowing, with plenty of talk about sex and nude bodies. But the film is not all that bad. Certainly not as bad as it was poorly received in Cannes last year. It is yet another Greenaway film that is beautiful to look at. The setting is nice, it was filmed in Luxembourg. Not one of Greenaway's best films, but certainly worth watching.

A master visual allegorist reaches farther and fails. But not for the reasons others claim here. Greenaway has never centered his films in the narrative -- we'd always be frustrated to look for satisfaction there. (`Drowning' which among his works most delivers a story does so incidentally.) And this is a film about women, not sex, which will frustrate others.

Here is his most character-driven film. At last, he works on closeups and some character definition. The primary ordering of the film is by basic archetypes of women, particularly archetypes drawn by men. This is supposed to be his most painterly film: the representative women are to be presented in scenes that reference famous paintings. Greenaway has stated that painting cuts to the basic drivers in cultural revolution, and the representations of women therein are tokens for everything conceived. Women thus are both humans and basic tokens in the redefinition of life.

Such a rich conception is thoroughly Greenawayan and might have formed the skeleton for another masterpiece. Along the way, we have by now familiar devices. Numbers: random as in pachinko rather than ordered. Contrasts between Eastern (here just Japanese) and Western management of concept and image. Some slight use of layered images, here in the self-reference of displaying the screenplay.

My complaints are two. I consider them fatal, but still celebrate Greenaway.

The notion of archetype depends on clarity, a natural orthogonality and completeness of classes. Here we have the nun, whore, Chinadoll, servant, cripple, childbearer, fetishist, butch, and spontaneous addict. Time is invested in defining these. A few are singled out to be something more than props for lush compositions: the geisha chinadoll, the lesbian accountant, the gambler and the opportunistic, openly enthusiastic whore. But in bringing them to life, they escape their categories: two of these are male impersonators, another two financial manipulators, another two vamps. Three are Japanese. Usually, Greenaway's combination of painting (erudite structure and framing of scenes) and film (narrative, development) reinforce one another. Here, they dissonate.

The second problem may be more fundamental. You really have to know your stuff to enjoy these films. My knowledge of The Tempest is rather deep, so I saw how rich was `Prospero's Books.' I read up on restoration comedy for `Draughtsman,' and discovered art in the viewing that I presume no one else in the theater saw. This film is supposed to reference the feminine archetype not as defined by popular culture, but by the history of painting. My knowledge of the art is poor, so I cannot attest to how deep the annotations are here. (Little use is made here of the layered image and narrative comment. Wonder why, since it would have been so natural.

But I do know Gauguin, who also was a visual allegorist, who also worked with feminine archetypes and also the fascination with Asian differences. His monumental canvas `Where are We Going?' does just what this film purports.

I wonder if there is little there in this film.

Most disappointing -- Greenaway's slide continues on from the flagrantly banal "Pillow Book", which looked like a pornographic Sprint commercial and had about as much intellectual impact. The thin visual style of "Women" harkened back to "Drowning by Numbers", one of my personal favorites, but the interchangeable, glibly apathetic characters lacked the depth necessary to hold it up. As usual, some interesting discussion of the body and its trappings, but sadly, prematurely self-referential and dull on the whole. Note that Vivian Wu manages to turn in yet another openly wretched performance, this time while fully clothed; Toni Collette provides minor temporary relief with her hilarious accent.

The 1st third of the film is densely textured with text and image overlays (as in his last few films). The effect reminds me of nothing more than the collages of Tom Wesselman and to some extent the paintings of Sigmar Polke. The interactions of the many layers is quite masterful & I especially like the way that everything, including actors dialogue and plot are treated equally as texture.

Each section of the film begins with a text overlay of the scene description from the script. The full text is never on screen long enough to be read in its entirety. This reinforces the sense of story and dialogue as texture... of text as texture.

The 2nd third of the film moves away from the visual overload mode as the theme of collecting sexual fantasies (represented by the women in the harem built by the Father and Son) comes into focus. It reminds me a bit of the collage-novels of Max Ernst in that it hangs a string of reveries on the framework of linear narrative... but the narrative is really just an excuse for manipulating images.

The 3rd third becomes a bit turgid, probably because the pattern of collecting women (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...) has become obvious by this time. In fact the film shows itself for what it really is.... a catalogue of desires. It is not particularly erotic though it represents a list of fantasies... whatever the subject is, it still retains the character of a list. This has the effect normalizing the erotic. One no longer questions whether the pleasures depicted are "normal" or "perverse"... they all become equal... a decorative pattern.... in much the same way that the dialogue resembles a complex pattern more than it does naturalistic speech.

In many ways it reminds me of De Sade's "120 days of Sodom" (an old Surrealist favorite) which I also find to be as un-erotic as a list. As one of the characters in the film states: (it simply) "follows the fantasies to their logical conclusion". It seems to be more of an intellectual exercise aimed at unshackling desire... it does not seem to be aimed at provoking desire (in the viewer).

There are, however, many poetic passages. During a scene in which one of the women is shaved bald the father and son pick up clumps of hair and attempt to describe the smell:

"it smells like canaries...'

"like brown sugar taken out of a damp paper bag..." &tc.

The images are also poetic. My favorite is a japanese woman clad in a very red kimono singing nasally in front of a very blue door & next to a very pink pig.

The sons (apparent) ability to invoke earthquakes (orgasms?) is also an interesting poetic touch.