Review: "Nine"

As a musical, "Nine" is fairly enjoyable. There's a lot of pageantry, dancing, gorgeous costumes and equally gorgeous women wearing them. The songs aren't really strong enough to make you want to rush out and buy the soundtrack, but the actors, mostly non-professional singers, carry them off fairly well.

As a story, though, this film version of the Broadway show -- which, in turn, was adapted from Federico Fellini's seminal autobiographical film "8½" -- "Nine" leaves much to be desired.

It's the tale of Guido Contini, a successful Italian movie director struggling to make his 9th film, though he doesn't have a script or even a notion of what it's about. Nonetheless, sets are being built and costumes being stitched, and the flurry of activity at the studio has an undercurrent of panic because his last two flicks were flops.

Meanwhile, his personal life is a shambles as he juggles his wife, mistress and lead actress, all vying for attention.

Now, let me get my biases right off my chest here: I'm not a big fan of movies about tortured artists. Whenever a film endeavors to convince us how much people who paint or write or direct have to suffer for their art, it makes me want to watch them dig sewage ditches or teach at an inner-city high school, just so they'd know what real hardship is.

Filmmakers using their art medium to contemplate their own role in creating it just strikes me as wretchedly narcissistic.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido, who makes us like him a little bit by acknowledging in his opening song that he's a 10-year-old boy housed in the body of a man nearly 50. He knows he's headed for a cliff, creatively and romantically, but he just can't take his foot off the gas.

Day-Lewis nails the Italian accent, and makes for a striking figure with his head and shoulders perpetually hunched like he's expecting a blow. His singing is just so-so, though he only performs a couple of tunes.

The rest of the songs are sung by the various women in Guido's life, swirling through his imagined movie as they represent different aspects of his own fantasies and delusions.

The best song, and singer, is "Be Italian," sung by pop star Fergie (aka Stacy Ferguson) from the Black Eyed Peas. She plays Saraghina, a beach-dwelling prostitute who taught Guido a few things about love when he was a boy.

We already knew Marion Cotillard (who plays Guido's wife Luisa) could sing from her Oscar-winning performance in "La Vie En Rose." So it's no surprise that she pulls off her two songs quite well, particularly the raging emotions of "Take It All."

Nicole Kidman (as Guido's leading lady) also does well with "Unusual Way," as does Penelope Cruz (as Guido's desperately needy mistress) with the torch song "A Call From the Vatican."

Judi Dench, as Guido's longtime costume designer and confidant, is less impressive with her tune, and Sophia Loren's lullaby as Guido's mother is so short it seems tacked on just to give an excuse to include the Italian screen legend.

Kate Hudson, playing a nosy American journalist, has fun with the upbeat "Cinema Italiano," which was not in the stage version but was written exclusively for this film.

Director Rob Marshall ("Chicago") is a dazzling visualist, and the musical scenes hum along under their own energy and momentum. Whenever the music stops, though, "Nine" is revealed as a silly story in need of a chair.

2.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "8½"

Before I watched "Nine," the musical film based on the Broadway show based on Federico Fellini's 1963 film "8½," I figured I'd better watch the original.

After doing so, I have to admit I feel pretty much the same way about it as I did "Nine." Here's what I wrote in that review:

"I'm not a big fan of movies about tortured artists. Whenever a film endeavors to convince us how much people who paint or write or direct have to suffer for their art, it makes me want to watch them dig sewage ditches or teach at an inner-city high school, just so they'd know what real hardship is. Filmmakers using their art medium to contemplate their own role in creating it just strikes me as wretchedly narcissistic."

I still enjoyed Fellini's film, even though "8½" is the very essence of self-indulgence. This is a movie in which the filmmaker expresses his ambivalence and confusion about his role as a maker of movies, and his life in general.

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido, a 43-year-old director just coming off his greatest success. It's time to start work on a new film, but his personal life is in a shambles. Meanwhile, his producer is pushing him to start production immediately on his most ambitious (and expensive) movie yet, while his writing collaborator wastes no opportunity to talk about how bad his new script is.

The story, such as it is, unspools as a collection of fantasies and memories, the one often bleeding into another. Mostly they're about the women in Guido's life, how they've influenced him and how he's mistreated them. At the center is his wife Luisa, played by the stunning Anouk Aimee. She's almost contented herself with his constant philandering, but cannot reconcile his lying about it.

As the story opens, Guido has fled to a remote spa to recover his health and sanity, but the production follows in his wake. He invites Luisa to join him, even though he's already set up his mistress in a nearby hotel.

The central fantasy sequence is one in which Guido imagines himself the lord and master of a household filled with a harem of women. They dote on him, wash him, even carry him around like a baby. But when one of the older women protests at being sent "upstairs," it sparks a revolt that forces Guido to fight off his female antagonists with a whip, like a lion tamer.

I have not seen a lot of Fellini -- my first experience was with the excellent "La Strada" from a few years earlier, before the director became fascinated with spectacle. I must say I found the march of numerous faces difficult to follow, particularly some of the women he sprinkles around the film.

"8½" is a very personal film, I think, about a man trying to sort out the demons inside his head and heart. It makes for an interesting journey into the filmmaker's soul, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend more than a brief vacation there.

3 stars