Nine review aka how not to potray women
{FILM DIARY}
Nine (2009, USA/Italy)
Seen: Wednesday, 27th January 2010 (cinema)
Runtime: 118′
Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren, Stacy Ferguson
Production House: Weinstein Company, The, Relativity Media, Marc Platt Productions, Lucamar Productions, Cattleya
Plot: (from imdb)
Famous film director Guido Contini struggles to find harmony in his professional and personal lives, as he engages in dramatic relationships with his wife, his mistress, his muse, his agent, and his mother.
Trailer
See it here.
Impressions In Short
I hoped for something better *sigh*
More About the Film
The musical is a sort of homage to Fellini’s 8 1/2 (which I’ve actually still not seen *blush*). The problem I had with this film was that it totally failed at capturing one of the most beautiful things about Fellini’s movies - the way he potrayed women. So the result was that they had this absolutely amazing cast of really sexy ladies of all ages, shapes and sizes and yet Rob Marshall didn’t seem to have any interest in them. It was as if what was supposed to make those ladies sexy was the lipstick, the corsets, the stockings… All the sex was about the accessories, never about the ladies themselves (I’m not saying accessories are a bad thing, but it should be the accessories showing off the lady and not the other way round :]). And that’s just completely against the spirit of Fellini :]
And what a waste of such an awesome cast! It was sad to see that all the women seemed much sexier in the footage from rehearsals which ran during the credits. Once they were pushed into the image of what a sexy woman should be they just lost so much personality :-/
Daniel Day-Lewis got the Italian accent spot on. There was a particularly good shot at the very beginning of the film where he’s in a press conference and the footage is in black and white and somehow the way he did it and the way they shot it, it really captured the atmosphere of those times. But such moments were few and far between. For the most part I felt the movie just had this omnipresent layer of fakeness.
Recommended?
Nope, not really. I mean I suppose if you really like musicals then you can give it a shot. Daniel Day-Lewis fans will probably be happy. I suppose fans of any of the actresses might find the film worth watching, but they’re just so badly used *sigh* I thought Marion Cotillard was particularly good at trying not to give into the sabotage ;) (I thought “Take It All” was the only song number, which didn’t seem so fake and vulgar even though ironically it goes the furthest - it’s a striptease basically) So I suppose I’d recommend it to her fans in particular.
