8½ Women
- Director: Peter Greenaway
- Writer: Peter Greenaway
- Producer: Jimmy de Brabant; Terry Glinwood
CGiii Comment
An homage to Fellini's 8½ - Greenaway style.
Pillow Book was bad - this is worse...by a huge margin.
Greenaway has made some truly inspiring films - perhaps, he has done away with the inspiration and now makes any old script into a film - as long as it involves getting respectable actors to bare their butts - is he laughing at everyone?
Alas...we're not laughing with him.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
After his wife dies, fifty-five-year-old businessman Philip Emmenthal (Sir John Standing), at the prompting of his playboy son Storey (Matthew Delamere), populates his Geneva villa with eight and a half concubines. Three are from Kyoto, Japan, where Storey manages Pachinco palaces. Each has a distinctive personality: a nun, a child bearer, a gambler, a student of Kabuki, a horsewoman with a pet pig, and a maid. Philip throws off his strait-laced and repressed attitudes, immersing himself in pleasure. After about a year, the women begin to assert their own power. Side adventures pre-figure the household's break-up, and the women depart in one way or another, one at at time. Philip's fate is in the hands of Palmira (Polly Walker), his favorite.
Cast & Characters
John Standing as Philip Emmenthal;
Matthew Delamere as Storey Emmenthal;
Vivian Wu as Kito;
Annie Shizuka Inoh as Simato;
Barbara Sarafian as Clothilde;
Kirina Mano as Mio;
Toni Collette as Griselda / Sister Concordia;
Amanda Plummer as Beryl;
Natacha Amal as Giaconda the Baby Factory;
Manna Fujiwara as Giulietta / Half Woman;
Polly Walker as Palmira;
Elizabeth Berrington as Celeste, Emmenthal Maid;
Myriam Muller as Marianne, Emmenthal Maid;
Don Warrington as Simon;
Claire Johnston as Amelia, Philip's Wife