Nine (12A)

FILM Nine – Homage to Fellini and 8 ½ Those who remember La Dolce Vita and 8 ½, will take particular interest in seeing how the work of the director of Chicago, Rob Marshall’s Nine, compares with that of his Italian hero, Fellini. For others the stellar cast will be a big draw: Sophia Loren, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, and Marion Cotillard, (Oscar winner for her Piaf in La Mome/ La Vie en Rose, and sharer (with Meryl Streep - Julie and Julia) of the Golden Globe 2010 for this performance), not to mention Nicole Kidman, Fergie (Stacy Ferguson), Kate Hudson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel Day-Lewis is no Mastroianni and he does not, as the director facing creative and personal crises, benefit from the comparison. He’s not actually bad, just one dimensional, as the script requires him to be, agonised and impotent. His leading ladies, Cotillard as his neglected wife and the passionate Cruz as his mistress, together with the remote goddess, Kidman as his star, the powerful Loren as his mother and the reliable and supportive Dench as his costume designer and confidante, almost overwhelm him, though mostly they too have limited opportunities. Maestro Contini –Day-Lewis with an Italian accent – is haunted by the ghost of his mother, the imposing Loren, and titillated by Fergie, the beach prostitute of his boyhood; he uses his wife for professional advice and seeks drama, and the passion he can no longer find in himself, in his mistress. His leading lady is his muse and his costume designer supplies encouragement and a measure of understanding. There is no script for Italia, his ninth film and he flees the pre-production press conference unable to face the media, his production team or himself. He drives through Rome, past the sights, in an open top Alfa Romeo before attempting to hide away in a grand seaside hotel. After his mistress attempts suicide, in the small pensione he had booked for her in the same resort, he returns to Cinecitta and announces there will be no new film. A couple of years later, after withdrawal from ‘la dolce vita’, with a beard to emphasise his new seriousness and encouraged by a visit from Judi Dench, the great director suddenly returns to Rome, with restored confidence, to make a new film to be called ‘Nine’. Everyone is happy: the old production team, the women in his life, and himself. This convenient ending however does not convince as a resolution of his lost inspiration and failed relationships. Director Rob Marshall began his career as a choreographer and the dance numbers, and the songs, could have helped to bring this story of personal and artistic failure to life. After all, the movie’s origins are to be found in a Broadway musical. Sadly, the dance routines, though slick, have a sameness that seems to highlight their length rather than their relevance or their creativity. Nor are they helped by Maury Yeston’s score which never finds an original or memorable voice. Cotillard’s two songs work best as they reveal her husband’s emptiness and his need to live off and through the other people in his life. ‘My husband makes movies’ and ‘Take it all’ are memorable for her rendition, though the tunes will not remain with us on the way home from the cinema! So where do we place this movie? Was it worth seeing? Probably, if only to remind of the searing exposure of the emptiness of Roman life in La Dolce Vita and the creative crisis so vividly realised in 8 ½. But the various women in Contini’s life are effectively brought to life by the stars portraying them, despite the brevity of most of their appearances. 5 ½ out of 10!

David Farrell, Hereford