The Nine lives of a director (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a designer (Judi Dench).
Growing up Guido!
Smoking, singing and climbing his way through Nine, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido Contini, a masterful Italian director trying to pull out of the slump of a string of flops. He has enough inspiration to make his magnum opus, Italia, but lacks a narrative, much less a script. Turning to every woman who has had an effect on his life, he searches and struggles, but to no avail.
Guido lives multiple lives in his one existence. He seeks advice from his dead mother (Sophia Loren), tells his wife, Luisa (Marion Cotillard), how much he adores her, but misses her birthday to spend time with his married mistress, Carla (Penélope Cruz). His muse, Claudia Henssen (Nicole Kidman), taunts him with her beauty and past promises of love. Lilli (Judi Dench), Guido's friend and costume designer, seems to be the voice of reason, encouraging her friend and trying to do right by keeping his marriage intact.
This fantastical film ostensibly questions dreams versus reality, imagination versus facts. Guido lives in his own world, full of memories from his childhood -- including a particularly Fellini-esque beach scene with the busty Saraghina (Stacy Ferguson, AKA Fergie) teaching young Guido and his friends about being Italian lovers.
Lacking bursts of color and brightness, the monotony of grays and browns echoes the overall tone of Nine. Directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha), written by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella and shot by Dion Beebe, Nine sadly lacks the vibrancy and vitality of Italy, and it certainly does nothing to entice the viewer into doing his or her own Italian cinematographic research.
Based on the Tony Award winning musical by the same title, which in turn is based losely on Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, Nine feebly attempts to re-imagine the maestro's classic. And while I applaud all the actors' efforts at singing her or his respective songs (most do quite admirably), the lazy lyrics are a distraction -- as is the overuse of wigs on the women.
