NINE REVIEW

Lie for Italian! NINE is sexy, elaborate, and ravishing. Just as Marty Scorsese is a master of gangster flicks, Rob Marshall lives and breathes musical, NINE is just another evidence that this is what he does best. Daniel Day-Lewis is… top notch as maestro Guido facing mid-life crisis, but then again, Day-Lewis is masterful at every role he plays. NINE is a movie that teases and tempts you with every sensuous, alluring choreography.

“Nine” is a vibrant and provocative musical that follows the life of world famous film director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he reaches a creative and personal crisis of epic proportion, while balancing the numerous women in his life including his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his film star muse (Nicole Kidman), his confidant and costume designer (Judi Dench), a young American fashion journalist (Kate Hudson), the whore from his youth (Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson) and his mother (Sophia Loren). The original 1982 Broadway production of “Nine,” nominated for twelve Tony Awards and winning five, including Best Musical, was directed by Tommy Tune, choreographed by Thommie Walsh, starred Raúl Juliá with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and book by Arthur Kopit. The 2003 Broadway revival of “Nine” received eight Tony Award nominations and won two, including Best Revival of a Musical.

NINE is a movie that glorifies and celebrates what’s fascinating about Italia and its cinema, each musical number, each song puts Italia on a pedestal. Marshall gives us nostalgic shots, and by that I mean, some scenes would remind us of what Francis Ford Coppola would do for his Godfather saga.
What’s funny about NINE is that the director is American, and most of the lead actors are British, French, Spanish, Aussie.. and then one Sophia Loren who’s a natural born Italian, but it works not just because we’re talking about a bunch of talented Oscar worthy individuals here, a group of people or an ensemble cast with a list of awards the size of Texas, but it also sorta speaks along the line of the theme of the movie.. lying… about yourself, about what you’re doing, hide and lie, and then hide and lie some more.

The art direction, the set are clever, it’s like a multi-purpose stage that allows each character to have his own music video. Marshall introduces all the lead characters and ends it like a broadway would, by having each of them come out and make a grand exit to say good bye to the audience before it returns to a shot of Guido the maestro again. I love the cinematography as well and the use of bright projector lighting from the back to emphasize even more of the lonely Guido, how all his actions, after all those women and glamor, have led him to the point where he’s frustrated and all alone. All his efforts to hang on to his wife have gone to waste and he doesn’t seem to know why.

But the movie could be more fair, and I think it’s not necessarily its own fault, it’s just this is what tends to happen when you’re dealing with too many characters revolving around one. I think Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson and Fergie’s characters don’t have depth because they don’t get enough time to be more than just the actress, the journalist, and the prostitute, because we’re not given enough time to get to know them.

All of the women do so well in complicating Guido’s life that’s already pressured by the demand of another big movie. The screenplay by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella centers on how Guido can juggle all of them and keep his lies intact because each one is an additional headache. But two stand out, Penelope Cruz, all because that woman is not ashamed to shake her hips and open her legs, that woman can arouse even guys who have erectile dysfunction.. and Marion Cotillard, one of the greatest actresses of the last 10 years, as the wife who wonders if she’s still special in Guideo’s eyes, you can sense her longing and heartbreak. When she retreats or when she finally sees the truth, you can’t help but side with her because this is a woman who wants to believe that there’s a shred of hope left in her marriage. As Luisa Contini, Cotillard is both tragic and luminous.

Is there anything that Daniel Day-Lewis cannot do? To praise him for his acting is like to say good things about the Dalai Lama, tell us something we don’t know. With his Italian accent, his skinny tie, his scruffy look and his slouch that indicates a man stressed out of his mind, Day-Lewis keeps going from one woman to another, even to a cardinal and the ghost of his mother, to find direction and meaning but it’s plain to see that this is the phase he needs to go through and filmmaking is what he needs to continue to do.

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