The Thousands

Nine marshalls a galaxy of stars in stupendous musical set pieces: Penélope Cruz sliding down a swag of pink satin as if it were a banister; Kate Hudson’s flirty, flashbulb-dazzled fashion runway; Fergie’s beachside tarantella with arcs of sand cascading from tambourines. But based on the Broadway musical, based on Federico Fellini’s film 8½, based on Fellini’s own life, Nine feels as weighed down by intertextual references as a Folies Bergère showgirl by sequins and feathers.

Eschewing Fellini’s self-reflexivity about creative narcissism, Nine betrays a conviction that aesthetics can paper over any dodgy gender politics; I emerged from the cinema glutted and queasy from its spectacle of female objectification. Just like silly-sausage 60s auteur Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), Nine doesn’t seem to grasp that women deserve better than being men’s eye candy and moral compass.**Day-Lewis succeeds in making Guido seem charming; Judi Dench gets the best lines as his tough-talking costumier. In an amusing twist on Nicole Kidman’s cardboard-cutout persona, she’s Guido’s Anita Ekberg-esque muse. But the star turns are from Marion Cotillard as the wife losing her few remaining illusions, and from Cruz as the mistress who seems wounded by her own sexiness.