Nine

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      Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, and Penélope Cruz. Rated PG. Opens Friday, December 25, at the Cinemark Tinseltown and the Ridge Theatre

      In Federico Fellini’s self-absorbed masterwork 8 ½, which netted five Oscar nominations and two wins in 1963, Marcello Mastroianni played Guido Anselmi, a black-hatted director losing faith in his latest mess of a movie. Here, the creative block falls on a lean Daniel Day-Lewis’s Guido Contini and his wassamattayou accent. Mostly, he looks like a bad oyster is messing with his skills as a filmmaker and a seducer.

      It’s impressive that songwriters Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston were drawn to such introspectively monochrome material for their 1982 Broadway-musical update, upon which this stagy version is based, but Rodgers and Hart they ain’t. In any case, Fellini’s work was indelibly stamped with the circus-haunted music of Nino Rota, but there’s nothing to trumpet about in these torchy cabaret clichés. The dull lyrics and instantly forgettable melodies literalize what was mysterious while obliterating the self-mocking humour of a protagonist grown tired of being a cad, even if he can’t figure out any other way to live.


      Watch a trailer for Nine.

      The central characters have remained, but it’s sad to examine the casting choices made by director Rob Marshall, here struggling to outdo his gaudy Chicago. Marion Cotillard injects some emotion as Guido’s left-behind wife, and as his interfering mistress, Penélope Cruz is just as hot as you’d expect. But it would have been more clever for them to have switched roles.

      Elsewhere, Judi Dench is fine as the director’s costume-sewing conscience, Kate Hudson is laughable as a “spunky” Vogue reporter, and Sophia Loren is stately as his calm (okay, dead) saint of a mother. It would have been elegant to hand that last part to Claudia Cardinale, who in ’63 played the fresh-faced muse onto whom our chain-smoking hero projected his most innocent fantasies. In Nine, we instead get Nicole Kidman frostily channelling Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. Just because Guido mixes up his women, should we?

      See also: Fergie goes big in Nine

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