musings a go go

I watched a very interesting film this weekend, "8 Femmes" or en anglais, "8 Women". Now on a background note, I swore to myself back in college that I'd never watch another French film again after taking a very extensive French cinema class, but this just sucked me in and I had to watch it from beginning to end. It is about 8 women who are trapped in a manor house by a snowstorm--the phone lines are cut, the car has been sabatoged, nobody can come in or out and there is a dead body upstairs. This is very Clue-esqe and intriguing. The only way for the 8 women to find out who the murderess is is for everyone to tell the complete truth no matter how tough it is. It turns out that the wife of Monsieur (the murdered man), who is Madame, was planning on leaving him that morning with his partner that drove him to financial ruin. Their daughter who showed up the night before reveals that she is pregnant with Monsieurs baby, and Madame reveals that Monsieur wasn't her father after all--she was pregnant by another man when she married Monsieur. It also turns out that one of the maids was Monsieur's lover who he had employed there to satisfy his affair. Madame's mother (who lives in the manor along with her caretaker daughter) has been in a wheelchair this whole time, reveals that not only can she walk, she poisoned her husband and her virgin daughter (Madame's sister) who has totally devoted her life to care for her poor widowed mother, breaks down. To make things even more juicy, Monsieur's exotic dancer sister from Paris turns out has been there since the night before getting 500,000 francs for Monsieur to give to her lover (also Madame's lover) so they can run away and go to Mexico together. This exotic dancer is also the lover of the other maid, Chanel. To get to the bottom of the murder they have to be completely honest with each other and everyone finds out so much about everyone else. Another French twist to the movie is that the youngest daughter has staged her father's murder so that he can see for himself how greedy and manipulative all the women are. As soon as they find out they've been tricked by the younger daughter, they are furious, she opens Monsieur's bedroom, and he holds a gun to his head and blows his brains out. FIN