Nine

It is an embarrassing admission when I see so many movies and love just sitting in a cinema that I have never seen Fellini's 8½; regarded as an all time classic.

Nine is the musical based on the Fellini film.

Daniel Day-Lewis is the noted Italian director who may be over the hill and who is struggling to create a new movie if only he could come up with a script or better still some idea of what his movie is about. He is grappling with his past and the women in his life. They include his wife, Marion Cotillard, his mistress, Penelope Cruz, his favourite leading lady, Nicole Kidman, his costume designer, Judi Dench, the journalist pursuing him, Kate Hudson, his mother, Sophia Loren and his childhood lust object, Fergie.

Dench is her usual self, full of wry observations and the screen is alive whenever she appears. I'm enamoured of Cotillard who impresses in every role and makes a lot from her limited opportunities here. If I were straight I would be in lust with Cotillard. Fergie scores the musical's show stopper and her sequence is my favourite in the film.

I've read that Nine has been panned overseas. I'm not sure why although I acknowledge that as a musical, the work itself is on the average side. The film is basically a series of set musical pieces separated by the focus on an endlessly morose and duplicitious main character. But I liked the style and look of the film which evokes my own memories of Italian movies in the 1960s.