8-1/2 Women
The plot of writer/director Peter Greenaway’s 8-1/2 Women revolves around Philip (John Standing), an obscenely rich man who, after the death of his wife, sets up his own personal harem of women, each one of whom is hired to satisfy a particular sexual fantasy of his. Each of the women has her own reasons for staying: Beryl (Amanda Plummer) is a horse thief hiding out from the law; Griselda (Toni Collette) is a woman who gets so caught up in being a nun that she sticks around for spiritual reasons, despite the fact that the nun’s habit she wears is really only a sexual prop. Then there’s Storey (Matthew Delamere), Philip’s adult son, who isn’t above making the moves on even his own father to help him through his grief.
Greenaway’s treatment of sex is at once unblushing and completely juvenile. Despite copious viewings of naked bodies, there isn’t an ounce of anything even remotely sexy here, because nothing that is occurs is based in reality, either literal or psychological. Greenaway — whose earlier film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover I greatly enjoyed — may as well be writing about sex on another planet, so insincere and gaudily unrealistic and pointless is his portrayal of anything having to do with “human” desire.
by Derek Neff