Nine, rounded up from Fellini’s 8½ for mainstream integer consumption, was originally an Italian play (Six Passionate Women by Mario Fratti) before making its way to Broadway. It must have worked in at least one of those iterations, one would assume, ‘cause here’s the Awards-season feature film from Rob Marshall (Chicago), which certainly doesn’t. At best, it’s a lavish but utterly lackluster production filled with unmemorable songs.
And at worst, Nine is a masturbatory vanity project and an insult to Fellini. 8½ was Fellini’s most personal film (and by most accounts, his best), in which he directly inserted himself into the narrative as Guido, played by Marcello Mastroianni, a film director struggling with the genesis of his next film. Nine stars a Guido, too, here played by Daniel Day-Lewis, and he’s an even clearer parable for Fellini, with dates and locations spelled out for us on the screen.
And all through the movie, there’s this uncomfortable parallel between Fellini and the director of the current film, Rob Marshall. Marshall is too impersonal a director to truly strike an emotional chord and bring on the full offensive, but here he is, inserting himself in Fellini’s shoes, a director making a film about a director and just who does he think he is? we’re thinking to ourselves.
Despite the extra .5, you might have guessed Nine isn’t quite as good as 8½. Just who was this movie made for, I’m wondering? Those familiar with Fellini are likely to dismiss it outright, as pointless an undertaking as a musical remake of The Seventh Seal or Citizen Kane. Those unfamiliar with Fellini will be bored to tears. There’s just no drive to this thing as it flops around onscreen.
Guido Contini, the poor bastard. His wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard, all dolled up as Giulietta Masina) is nearly estranged, his lover Carla (Penélope Cruz) is unhappy waiting in the shadows, his producer Dante (Ricky Tognazzi) is throwing money at him and a production crew await his instructions for his epic Italie.
Throw in some Catholic guilt and mother-son issues, and Guido’s life is in crisis. It might sound a little trite, but in the movie it feels a lot trite. It’s amazing Fellini was able to pull so much out of the same material.
Ah yes, there’s song-and-dance, in the same vein as The Simpsons’ Planet of the Apes: The Musical. But a few hours after the movie you’ll forget all the song, though you might remember some of the dance.
Particularly Penelope Cruz’s stunning cabaret number. I swear she’s earned an Oscar nomination for this scene, which amounts to a Frederick’s of Hollywood photo shoot; she certainly didn’t garner it from her big emotional scenes, which fall completely flat.
There are other numbers, too, you might remember them because they got big names to perform them. Nicole Kidman as Claudia, Guido’s muse; Kate Hudson as an American fashion journalist; Fergie as a dark-skinned woman who gives a young Guido his first glimpse of flesh; even Judi Dench as Guido’s costume designer and Sophia Loren as his mother. I liked what I saw of all these performers in Nine, but they’re all one-and-done set decorations.
Daniel Day-Lewis might be good in the lead, but his character is so dull and uninteresting you’re unlikely to invest anything in him. Only Cotillard hits the right emotional notes. Location Italian production – costumes, sets and all the rest – is flawless, you’ll wish it went towards a better result.
