The Film Experience

As we march towards the Smackdown, we're also checking in with great supporting performances that weren't nominated. Here's Nick Taylor...

We've already discussed how Viola Davis had a spectacular 2002. But truth be told, it’s incredible how many actresses turned out multiple great performances in that film year: Samantha Morton headlined one of the best films of the past 20 years with intoxicating subtlety in Morvern Callar while delivering the most visceral, unsettling element of Minority Report. Maggie Gyllenhaal announced herself with a bang in Secretary and folded beautifully into the ensemble of Adaptation. Multiple cast members of The Hours gave equally memorable characterizations in other films - Meryl in Adaptation, Julianne in Far From Heaven, Miranda in Spider, Toni in About a Boy, and Claire in Igby Goes Down. (Side note: how wild is it that Nicole Kidman is the one who only made one movie that year?).

I’d argue Isabelle Huppert had the strongest one-two punch of any actress in 2002. Her ferocious, perverse, achingly lonely turn in The Piano Teacher ranks among the best acting feats of the ‘00s all by itself, and the fizzy, entertaining work she contributes to 8 Women is one of the funniest performances of a year defined by great comedic work...

Now, I know what you’re thinking: "8 women? 8 of them? 8? All played by some of the most famous French actresses in film history? Sign me up!" 8 Women is an adaptation of a 1958 murder mystery play, directed by François Ozon in stylistic homage to American melodrama auteurs like George Cukor, Vincent Minelli, and Douglas Sirk.

Oh, and did I mention it’s also a jukebox musical?

The plot, such as it is, opens with Gaby (Catherine Deneuve) returning from the train station with her eldest daughter Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) in tow, free from school for winter break. They’re greeted by Gaby’s younger daughter Catherine (Ludevine Sanger), Gaby’s sister Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), wheelchair-bound matriarch Mamy (Danielle Derrioux), longtime cook Chanel (Firmine Richard), and new but experience maid Louise (Emmanuelle Beart). Suzon is most excited to catch up with her father Marcel, a plan that hits a bit of a snag after Louise discovers him dead in bed with a knife in his back. They soon find the phone lines have been cut and Gaby’s car sabotaged, trapping them on the property. They’re eventually snowed in too, but not before Marcel’s black-sheep sister Pierrette (Fanny Ardant) arrives, having received a mysterious phone call informing her of her brother’s murder. And that's just the set-up.

For all the plush entertainment 8 Women eagerly offers, the whole thing winds up being less fun than it wants to be. Ozon’s staging feels stymied at translating this play for the screen - so much of the story takes place in that huge living room, and his attempts to vary the framing and editing from its usual cadences just reads as shaking things up for its own sake. Similarly, his recreation of ‘50s melodrama aesthetics grasps the look and texture of those films without ever being as skillful at using all its color and artifice to tell its story. The piling-up of outrageous secrets might have more heft if these revelations felt as though they were actually building towards something.

This last bit might be compensated for by a particularly agile cast though at its best 8 Women's ensemble is only ever running on half a tank. Three of them rise above the challenge. Danielle Derrieux is a hoot, nailing some unexpected physical comedy and a truly deranged monologue that kicks off the last third of the film. Fanny Ardant, with her chic outfit and gorgeous hair, is instantly bewitching. And, more than anyone else, Ardant looks like she’s having a good time, and she’s able to make this into a character point rather than coasting on her (considerable) charisma.

Isabelle Huppert reaches even greater heights as the neurotic, perpetually unhappy Aunt Augustine. Taking inspiration from Augustine's tachycardia (a condition where one’s heartbeat has a resting rate of 100 bpm), Huppert burns through 8 Women, shooting off her dialogue so fast its amazing how much dissatisfaction and irritation she’s able to put into her line readings while still making them work as comedy. There’s nothing funnier than watching her wheedle Suzon into sharing the brioche Chanel has made for her as a welcome home present, only to swipe two of the three buns off her plate as soon as she agrees, cooing about how great they’ll taste with the chocolate in her room. She’s also the only actress who regularly attempts physical comedy, dashing around the house like a hurricane and holding her body to accentuate what an angular, rigid figure Augustine is. Huppert makes Augustine such an open mess of wounded self-pity and shrewish unhappiness that you wouldn’t believe she could keep anything about herself secret.

What elevates Huppert’s work beyond pure, spirited caricature, are the moments of sympathy and heartache she stirs in. She fully commits to her musical number “Message Personale”, Augustine’s requiem for her own loneliness and inability to connect. The tune imbues her character with a light melancholy and rare, early moment of self-awareness that Augustine dispels almost as soon as the song ends but Huppert wisely keeps track of. After learning a heartbreaking secret from her mother, she walks up to her room with her wasted life, and swipes everything off her dresser before crumpling in on herself. Augustine undergoes a massive transformation near the end of 8 Women, her look and affect completely different than the woman we’ve spent so much time with. It’s the kind of total reinvention that requires a strong actress, and Huppert strikes this new pose with the same seamless grace she’s held throughout. All she needs to do is saunter down the stairs and ask for a light, to let everyone know that this is a new Augustine they’ll just have to get used to.

Would that it were so simple for 8 Women itself to exist so casually. I wish more filmmakers would attempt to create something like 8 Women, which is far from perfect but takes plenty of admirable risks with tone and style, to say nothing of how much material it provides for high-caliber actresses to go nuts. If nothing else, Isabelle Hupper is giving us the most delicious, high-energy star turn in a film seemingly designed for great actressing that can't quite manage it across the board.

Huppert's sheer range of notes within this high-end farce, coupled with the massive difference in tone, demeanor, and severity between Aunt Augustine and The Piano Teacher's Erika Kohut is the kind of achievement an actress could plant an entire career on, yet Huppert has filled her filmography with smart, dangerous wrecks as vividly as Gena Rowlands. Maybe you prefer the two-fer of a different actress this year, and with options as rich as these you could hardly go wrong. But no one does it like Huppert, and that's a fact.