This movie is simultaneously a tragicomedy, a suspense murder story and a musical in a very well balanced mixture. There is no male character except for the man who lies there on bed with a knife in his back almost since the beginning. And as a matter of fact the movie is not short of it since the 8 women fill it with their marvellous performances namely the 4 sacred monsters of French cinema: Darrieux, Deneuve, Ardant and Huppert. The scenery of the interior where the women are enclosed is of gorgeous luxury. The story develops itself in a crescendo of intertwined secrets in which everyone's cupboards are being successively opened showing the skeletons hidden there. No one escapes that not even the 2 teen-agers or the 2 maids. The first scenes make us think we are going to see a pink movie showing the life of a happy virtuous and well-behaving family but conflict soon begins throwing every member against every other one as far as those terrible secrets become revealed sometimes in an explosive way. There are no flaws in the story structure no matter how surprising its developments may be. However the end (which of course I won't reveal now) looks like being somewhat weak as a logical solution to the plot that seduces us more and more as far as it's being developed and that makes us expect a quite different climax. When I say weak I mean a little bit artificial in terms of logic. But anyway it's a story worth seeing and that small imperfection doesn't affect too badly the movie's global merits.
