Eight bizarre femmes make one fabulous comedy

Quality French cinema is like O'Henry's short stories; rarely, if ever, will a viewer be able to predict what story will be told; when it seems like everything has already been tried and thoroughly exploited, and novelty is presented in movies only by way of computerized special effects, the French screen once again produces something fresh and completely unexpected.

In "8 Women", Francois Ozon defies cinematic cliches by taking virtually every mystery convention and turning it completely on its head. Granted, subverting the dominant paradigm has itself become a cliche in recent years, but the parody expressed by "8 Women" is so subdued and refined, that the movie completely escapes being trite.

Georges Simenon, the king of modern French mystery literature, liked to combine murder riddles with sombre melodrama, in an effort -- perhaps more instinctive rather than deliberate -- to elevate the somewhat plebeian mystery genre to the same venerated status as Aristotelian tragedy.

"8 Women" seems to take a particularly wicked stab at Georges Simenon, in that it incorporates numerous archetypes routinely found on the pages of his books: a wealthy but miserable couple haunted by previous loves; an exasperated man living in a den of warring vipers; a young and mysteriously dignified maid; an estranged sister; a bitter old maid of indeterminate age; a fat and kindly cook, everyone's confidante; a troubled older daughter; a naive and uncorrupted younger daughter.

Add a spacious old country mansion and a bonus dark secret to be revealed, apart from the main mystery, and you have the staple ingredients of a Georges Simenon novel.

To top it all off, when the only male character in the movie is found murdered, it is clear (of course!) that one of the eight women is the perpetrator, and once a severe winter storm cuts them off from the rest of the world, the murderess and her potential victims are left to stew in their own juice.

The cliches end with the dramatis personnae and the locale, however. Once the stereotypical stage is set, everything -- from the heroines' zany musical numbers, to the complete perversion of characters' archetypal roles, to the brilliant and boisterous dialogue is designed to take the viewer by surprise and to turn a murder mystery into a farce.

"8 Women" boasts an all-star cast, and every actress adds a whole new dimension to the movie -- Catherine Deneuve, her mysterious aloofness; Fanny Ardant, her dark sexuality; Isabelle Huppert, her menacing aggressiveness; Firmine Richard (the star of "Romuald et Juliette"), her deceptive simplicity.

In line with the movie's general form as a farce, the characters defy cold logic and rationality which govern crime stories, and infinitely complicate the mystery puzzle with intricacies of human motivation -- and a proposition that a murderer may need no better reason to commit the crime than his inability to stand the victim's face. That makes the movie both a fine comedy and a fine mystery.