Eight women and me

So I went to Blockbuster last night looking for a French movie to practice my listening (the one facet of this language thing that’s sorely lacking for me), and I came home with a flick called 8 Femmes starring Catherine Deneuve. The DVD case made it sound like a quaint little murder mystery: a man is murdered in his bed, during a snowstorm, in his own home with his family present. So I pick it up, grab some sushi on the way home, and settle in to see if I can be entertained for the evening.

Dude! I was totally not prepared for the spectacle that followed. The eight women in his home (wife, two daughters, sister, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, two maids) get to play Mademoiselle Marple through two surreal hours of plot twists, back-stabbing, catty comments, and bizarrely placed torch songs. It was part Gosford Park, part Cop Rock, part Dynasty (remember Alexis and Crystal in the swimming pool?), and part What The Hell Was That?? Every character surprised me at least once, and several of the scenes made beer come out of my nose. At the end of the movie, I was like Donkey after the singing puppet kiosk: "Let’s do that again!"

My head is still spinning, but I'm going back to ride this one again.