Photo: Annie Leibovitz for Vogue.
STAR POWER | What do you get when you combine one Tony award-winning musical (based on one of history’s most influential film directors), starring seven A-list female stars and one of the greatest male leading actors of the past twenty years? Greatness — you would assume, right? Well, you would be wrong.
Monday night, HN was treated to a preview screening of the film adaptation of the 1982 Tony award-winning Best Musical, “Nine.” Both the film and the musical are treatments of Federico Fellini’s autobiographical and seminal film “8 ½,” which tells the tale of a fictional director, Guido Contini — a stand in for Fellini himself. In the film Contini finds himself creatively blocked, suffering a mid-life crisis, mooning over the great loves of his life. Directed by Rob Marshall, of “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Chicago” fame, the movie features a ridiculous wealth top Hollywood talent consisting of (insert drum roll please):
- Daniel Day-Lewis (2-time Academy Award winner, “There Will Be Blood”)
- Judy Dench (Academy Award winner, “Shakespeare in Love”)
- Kate Hudson (Golden Globe winner, “Almost Famous”)
- Penelope Cruz (Academy Award winner, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”)
- Marion Cotillaird (Academy Award winner, “La Vie En Rose”)
- Sophia Loren (Academy Award winner, “La ciociara”)
- Nicole Kidman (Academy Award winner, “The Hours”)
- Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson (Grammy nominated performer)
Before the criticism, lets discuss the good. All the women in the film killed it (Yes, even Fergie). The audience literally cheered when Cruz as Cotini’s mistress, finished her “Call from the Vatican” number. It should come as no surprise that Cruz can sing — she’s belted out songs in many of her films including Belle Époque (one of her first films), and “La niña de tus ojos” — for which she won a Goya Award. Kate Hudson plays her best character since “Almost Famous” — a swinging sixties “Vogue” writer. But most of all, and again no surprise, Ms. Cotillliard as the wife of Contini, proved once again that she has no intention of being a one-hit-Oscar-wonder never to be seen again. With such abundant star power, what went wrong?