Nine (2009)

Director:

Rob Marshall

Writers (WGA):

Michael Tolkin (screenplay) and
Anthony Minghella (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

25 December 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Musical | Romance

Plot:

Famous film director Guido Contini struggles to find harmony in his professional and personal lives, as he engages in dramatic relationships with his wife, his mistress, his muse, his agent, and his mother.

Plot Keywords:

Song | Italian | Dancer | Singer | Rome Italy

Awards:

Nominated for 5 Golden Globes. Another 2 wins & 24 nominations

Cast

Daniel Day-Lewis	...	Guido Contini
Marion Cotillard	...	Luisa Contini
Penélope Cruz	...	Carla
Nicole Kidman	...	Claudia
Judi Dench	...	Lilli
Kate Hudson	...	Stephanie
Sophia Loren	...	Mamma
Stacy Ferguson	...	Saraghina (as Fergie)
Ricky Tognazzi	...	Dante
Giuseppe Cederna	...	Fausto
Elio Germano	...	Pierpaolo
Andrea Di Stefano	...	Benito
Roberto Nobile	...	Jaconelli
Romina Carancini	...	Production Assistant
Alessandro Denipotti	...	Production Assistant

Also Known As:

Untitled Rob Marshall Project (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sexual content and smoking.

Country:

USA | Italy

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour | Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG-13 (certificate #45660) | Ireland:12A | UK:12A

Filming Locations:

Camber Sands, Camber, East Sussex, England, UK

Company:

Weinstein Company, The

Trivia:

The original Broadway musical opened May 9, 1982 at the 46th Street Theater and ran for 729 performances with Raul Julia as Guido. It won five Tony awards, including Best Musical and Best Featured Actress. The latest Broadway production, starring Antonio Banderas as Guido, opened on Apr 10, 2003 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and ran for 283 performances. It won two Tonys: Best Revival of a Musical and Best Featured Actress. Banderas turned down the chance to reprise his role as Guido in the film version.

Quotes:

Liliane La Fleur: [adjusting the collar of Guido's suit] You're a world class liar, darling. Go out there and lie for Italy. Lie for Italia.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Angela and Friends: (#1.29)" (2009)

Soundtrack:

Quando Quando Quando

The visuals and Day-Lewis make up for an otherwise disappointing musical effort

Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a famous Italian director who scored big with his older films, but his last two films were flops. As he gets set to work on his latest film, he stumbles headfirst into writer's block. As he attempts to come up with ideas, his professional and personal lives begin to fall apart, and all he can do is muse about all the women in his life that he has loved.

While I swear up and down that I dislike musicals, I do find enough material to usually entertain myself throughout any number of them (and surprisingly greatly enjoy more than a few as well). Nine sounded like a surefire success on paper, and in the trailers. With its jam packed Oscar winning cast, Oscar winning crew, and the source material of one of the most respected films ever made, there really was no room for error. I really wanted to love Nine, but rather unfortunately, the film itself leaves a lot to be desired.

The film is quite simply, not a strong enough picture to maintain anyone from start to finish. It is a lavish musical, but it is far too grounded in its ideas and spectacles to really make something of itself. It frequently drags its heels through scenes of dialogue, and then blasts through its songs in such a short span that you may blink and miss them. To stretch some of them out, scenes of extended dialogue are interspersed in between verses, leading to a jarring effect that takes you out of some of the songs. While animated Disney musicals are known to have dialogue filled interludes between and during songs, somehow they manage to not feel awkward when transitioning between them. In Nine, it passes the awkward stage and just feels uncomfortable and silly when it is done. Every song does not feel this way, but the majority of them do.

Worse yet, the story at the heart of the entire picture, Guido's midlife existential crisis, just lacks any hook to really bring the audience into his world. We know he is having problems with his wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard). We know he has a mistress in Carla (Penélope Cruz) that likes him a whole lot more than he does her. We know he keeps having visions of his long dead mother (Sophia Loren). And the list just keeps going on from there. The film just keeps taking us around the bend of all of these women, and how Guido sees them in the grand scheme of his life, but it never stops to answer why he is having the crisis in the first place. It just jumps around aimlessly, hoping for everyone else to care about this sad shell of former greatness more than the people around him do. Its near ludicrous jumps in focus tend to drag the film out further than it needs to go, and any interesting moments are usually spared for jumping to the next idea.

The jumps in focus are only half the problem however. The gorgeously talented female cast that makes up the majority of Nine are given so little to do that it is no wonder there is no time to learn why each woman is contributing to Guido's crisis. Each character is given a major song and dance number each, has a few lines of dialogue either before or after, and then are swiftly removed from the rest of the film. Nicole Kidman practically appears and disappears in less than ten minutes (her dreadful attempt at an Italian accent is dropped even faster), Kate Hudson barely registers on the radar and Fergie barely appears at all (despite having the strongest song in the film in "Be Italian"). I understand this is likely an issue with the source material (a 1982 Broadway musical based off Federico Fellini's 8½), but it could have easily been resolved with more attention being placed on details, or simply cutting a few characters out. Cotillard and Cruz do have a lot of emphasis placed on them, but the rest could easily be chopped down or simply taken right out for how much the filmmakers seem to care about them.

But for its issues, I was wowed by the sheer design of the film. The choreography is simply out of this world from beginning to end, and the set designs and cinematography are top notch. This is a very stylish musical above anything else, and it shows in how everything looks (even if the majority of scenes are filmed on or around one sound stage). The stress and symbolism placed on sex is the most pronounced ideal in the film, and as such, are the best moments in the film. Fergie's "Be Italian" is wonderfully realized on screen, and Cruz's "A Call from the Vatican" is one of the sexiest scenes ever captured on celluloid. Its The editing also gets a lot of praise here, as the film packs on inventive camera angles and beautifully captured scenes that seem to be amassed in colours in one scene, and then look very washed out or in black and white in others. It makes for a very interesting experience visually; one that leads the viewer to believe they are watching a much better realized film than they actually are.

But in the end, this is Day-Lewis' film, and he knocks another one out of the park. Though he is not as strong as he was in There Will Be Blood or Gangs of New York, his excellent performance here overshadows everyone in the cast. His Italian accent is impeccable, and his singing voice is even better. I doubted he could pull the role off, but it is one of the only reasons to catch Nine. It is a weak film, with enough shining areas to make it watchable. But it could and should have been great.

7/10.