NINE
Directed by Rob Marshall
Produced by Marshall, John DeLuca, Marc Platt & Harvey Weinstein
Written by Michael Tolkin & Anthony Minghella, based on the book for the musical Nine by Arthur Kopit, music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, adapted from the Federico Fellini film 8 ½
Released by the Weinstein Company
USA/Italy. 112 min. Rated PG-13
With Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Fergie, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman & Sophia Loren
 

The challenges of adapting the 1982 Broadway musical Nine (which was, in turn, a twist of Federico Fellini’s 8 ½) are daunting. It features a melodic but bland score by Maury Yeston that is not well known, lacking one identifiable hit number. Neither fish nor foul, the songs are a cross between show tunes and power ballads. (The Muzak standard, “Quando, Quando, Quando,” featured in a nightclub setting, is by far the most famous tune in the film.) Only one song, “Cinema Italiano,” written specially for the film, has the beat, syncopation, and briskness of anything remotely contemporary. Nine’s also a movie about movies, an insular genre that is not the stuff of blockbusters.

Yet as a spectacle, Nine succeeds, with an elegant and mod production design inspired by the La Dolce Vita era (1959) that is more sophisticated than the score. Filming on location helps greatly. The film revolves around the internationally famous and creatively constipated Italian film director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis). Most of the musical numbers, which take place either in the mind of Guido or of the women in his life, are set on a darkened Cinecittà soundstage, but without the starkness of director Rob Marshall’s Chicago. There’s nothing mundane, at least visually, about the film. Bombarded with fast-cut images, the eye doesn’t rest for a moment. The experience will be optimized in the theater, where the viewer will be practically blasted to the back wall by the vocals, aided by Dolby Digital.

However, the film has little to hang its hat on, plot-wise—it is more a revue than a traditional book musical. After a string of flops, Guido flees Rome in a panic to the seaside, not having written a word for the script of his new movie, which starts shooting in only 10 days. Searching for inspiration, he imagines (or remembers) the women of his life through song and dance, where they shed their outer shells and reveal their inner vixen—his clingy mistress, Carla (Penélope Cruz); his wife and former leading lady (Marion Cotillard); a brash American Vogue reporter (Kate Hudson), to name three.

It’s difficult to sympathize with a kvetching Guido who has the Italian film industry at his feet as well as a coterie of beautiful women throwing themselves at him. In a thankless role, Day Lewis spends much of his time with his brow furled, contemplating what to do, stalled in neutral. But who are we kidding? The film belongs to its women. Even though the cast features innumerous award-winning actors, the standouts are Kate Hudson and Fergie, singer of the Black Eyed Peas, whose casting first seems like a stunt. Both get the best numbers.

Hudson performs the film’s most rollicking choreography in the “Cinema Italiano” number, with a little bit of the shag and a lot of head and hips swinging. The number was filmed at a slower film speed so that Hudson and the back-up dancers appear to be moving faster. That and the elaborate lighting effects along with the fan blowing her long tresses this way and that give the number the look of the most polished MTV video.

First seen in a flashback, Fergie appears as feral prostitute Saraghina, the object of nine-year-old Guido’s curiosity. Back on the soundstage, she belts “Be Italian,” beckoning the boy to behave like a Lothario, as opposed to Savonarola, straddling a chair surrounded by other scantily-clad women. With her head lowered and staring coldly at the camera, she threatens more than a coos. (“Be Italian. Live today as if it may become your last.”) In its choreography and editing, the entire number is a hats-off to “Mein Herr” from Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, and just one of the many reminders of how Fosse almost single-handedly modernized the post-’60s musicals: the fast cuts, blatant sexuality, and the exact, minimal moments. Here and in the “Cinema Italiano,” style easily triumphs over substance.

There are many coy references to Fellini’s films (Amarcord) that could only be inferred in the stage version, but director Rob Marshall never overdoes it with the homages. (No one jumps in, or gets near, the Trevi Fountain.) And as long as they are into lingerie, straight guys dragged to this are in luck. Much of the wardrobe, especially in the writhing number “A Call from the Vatican,” featuring Cruz, leaves little to the imagination. Kent Turner
December 18, 2009