I knew I just had to watch this movie from the first time I saw the trailer. And Nine surely didn’t disappoint my expectations. I expected it to be beautifully shot, which it definitely is. I expected it to be well acted, which it absolutely is. And I expected it to be sexy, which it is 100%.

The story I didn’t expect. Or at least I didn’t know anything about it. Famous Italian director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is about to shoot another movie but doesn’t have a script or even an idea what the movie should be about. All he has is the title: Italia. What he also has are lots and lots of muses to help him create his stories. The movie is divided in two parts: One is the story of him and his problems with women and his producers and in the other part we see his fantasies of the women around him singing songs and dancing to express their emotion. Whenever he is with a woman his thoughts drift off into this dream world.

The Girls: Nicole Kidman is the star of all of Guido’s movies. She has a smaller part and although she is perfect for the role and I  usually like her I didn’t believe that she was upset in this movie. She was just giving a performance. I wasn’t impressed. As Guido’s wife Marion Cotillard gave an outstanding performance. Her I believed. She was truly hurting. I don’t think I have ever seen such a moving performance in a musical before. Penélope Cruz is funny as Guido’s mistress although I was surprised of just how sexy her dance was. That must have taken some courage to do in front of a movie crew. Sophia Loren seems the obvious choice for the part of the mother. She is wonderful but extremely lifted. Judi Dench is always great. She is the costume designer for Guido’s films and also takes on another mother figure for him. A sort of side character is Stacy Ferguson although she has the best singing act (Be Italian). This song is really well choreographed, she has a great voice and its just a fantastic song. I didn’t like Kate Hudson in this movie. She somehow doesn’t have the look of that time and her costumes and the song in her singing sequence seemed out of place and too modern. I do love that the movie has such an international cast. That seems to be unusual in movies and I always wonder why. Maybe thanks to globalization we will see more of this in the future.

But the real star of the film is Daniel Day Lewis. I think it is great that he was up for doing a musical. He seems to be mostly in very serious movies. He does bring a certain sincerity to the movie. He just is that character. I believed that he is Italian (excellent accent!), he certainly must have watched a lot of Italian films from that time. He is also charmingly in love with all of these women and it doesn’t come across as pervy how much he wants and needs them. And although he is really arrogant and self centered, he is likable.

The first half of Nine was a bit slow and all about Guido wanting women and being a ladies man but then the film really comes together and becomes a very moving story about an ultimately broken man who doesn’t know how he got to be the person who he is and who has lost focus on what is important in life. So looking back on it maybe the first, very sexy, part is needed to get to that point. I really enjoyed this movie. It has a great soundtrack and a very different story to what I have seen in musicals so far.

Tags: Daniel Day-Lewis, Guido Contini, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Nine, Penélope Cruz, Rob Marshall, Stacy Ferguson

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under American, Watched at the Cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.