A wicked little piece of malice disguised as a candy-colored love letter to cinema, 8 Women, written and directed by French bad boy and oft directing genius Francois Ozon (Sitcom, Criminal Lovers, Under the Sand), is an entertaining period murder mystery. It pays homage to Agatha Christie, Hollywood musicals, Douglas Sirk melodramas (everyone is these days), and a bevy of royal French actresses outfitted in an array of stylish couture.

On a cold winter's day in the late 1950s, an extended family of eight women gather together to celebrate the holidays with the bourgeois family patriarch. When he ends up with a knife in his back and the women remain snowbound, the finger pointing begins and lurid family secrets bubble to the fore. Along the way, there are eight rather odd but affecting musical interludes that function less like glimpses into the brittle heroines' psyches and more like a director in love with the campy flamboyance of old Hollywood and the joys of putting his actresses through such high-ordered hokum.

Ozon has assembled an impressive cast, a veritable who's who of French actresses. Catherine Deneuve, whose presence these days carries an iconic weight and just by showing up in a film single-handedly lends gravity, is Gaby, the matriarch who presides over this extended family. There's an alcoholic mother (Danielle Darrieux), a

neurotic, spinster-like sister, Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), two young daughters (Virginie Ledoyen and Ludvine Sagnier), a devoted family maid (Firmine Richard), a willful new servant (Emmanuelle Beart), and a wily, mysterious sister-in-law (Fanny Ardant), whose motivations may be financial or sensual. When the murder victim is discovered, the accusations begin, and verbal barbs on order with The Women and All About Eve rule the day.

But make no mistake, Ozon is really not interested in staging a classic whodunit; in fact, his intentions are quite the contrary. 8 Women is a film about style, scene chewing and artifice. Taking place nearly completely in one room and its adjacent corridors, the film is so theatrically ripe in its set design, costumes and performances that one half expects the camera to pull back to reveal an audience watching a staged ensemble. And there's barely any trace of real human behavior in the film, but a healthy dose of kitsch and stylized melodrama.

8 Women is nearly as specialized an entertainment as can be, and most certainly will find no wide, mainstream theatrical audience to tolerate its campy charms. And to be sure, at times it's a vulgar and ridiculous film, elegant and gaudy, beautiful and garish, sophisticated and juvenile.

Yet it works on the strength of an audacious director and game cast. Deneuve's trademark, glacier-like detachment is used to good effect. Ardant is sexy and mischievous. Beart, in a somewhat thinly conceived role, fulfills her trademark combination of intelligence and sensuality with aplomb. Huppert pulls the rug out from under the rest of the cast with a nuanced performance, simultaneously icy and

heartfelt. In the last several performances (The Piano Teacher, Merci Pour Le Chocolat, The Celebration), she's tapped into something primal; some sort of simmering, uncorked rage that here has been pushed over its tasteful limit into something grotesquely comic and inspired. Whether fiendishly stammering about, sobbing over the death of her own father or clawing (literally) her way into her "richer and more beautiful" sister Denueuve, Huppert's energy is cyclonic.

And though movie buffs, fans of femme fatale posturing and gay men everywhere will get a big kick out of 8 Women, mainstream audiences will most likely feel shut out of Ozon's cinematic stunt. After all, what right does a film with so many artistic and cinematic pretensions, layered in artifice, camp and mixed genres, many of them bound to be lost on a modern (American) audience, have to work as well as it does?

Ozon pays the issue no matter, instead content and probably dazed by his grand cast, eager to shove them from one over-the-top revelation to the next, impatiently building his film on some wildly silly and yes, entertaining, cat fights. At one point, he even concludes a wicked argument between Deneuve and Ardant with a floor-rolling make-out session. What trust he must have engendered on the set! One would love to be a fly on the wall during the rehearsals - moments like this are why DVD director commentaries were created.

From the silly nihilism in the modern-day Hansel and Gretel world of Criminal Lovers, to the zany suburban satire Sitcom, Ozon is clearly a mischief-maker of a very high order. In fact, 8 Women offers a return to his earlier form following his artistic nadir of Under the Sand, a

8 Women is nowhere in the league of Under the Sand, nor does it pretend to be - indeed, few films are. In the end, it's a pretty impressive stunt: gorgeous, ridiculous and even a bit sublime. 8 Women is all about the pleasure of the movies, and the considerable pleasure of watching an edgy modern director lovingly pay tribute to them while subverting them at the same time. A treat.