Review 7 women and a mystery [Netflix]

Director: Alejandro Genovesi | Screenplay: Alessandro Genovesi, Lisa Nur Sultan | To emit: Margherita Buy (Margherita), Diana Del Bufalo (Susanna), Sabrina Impacciatore (Agostina), Benedetta Porcaroli (Caterina), Micaela Ramazzotti (Veronica), ea | Time to play: 84 minutes | Year: 2021

who after Crystal Onion: A Knives Out Mystery If you fancy even more detective fun, you can continue Italian on Netflix. 7 women and a mysteryin which seven women are suspected of murdering a family patriarch who lies in his bed with a knife in his back.

It’s a story that may sound familiar to moviegoers, because the source material is a 1958 Robert Thomas play that was already filmed in 2002 by François Ozon. Thanks to the star parade with movie divas like Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart and Fanny Ardant, 8 women twenty years ago a blockbuster among the French public.

This golden formula could also work well in Italian, director Alessandro Genovesi must have thought. And so, a cast of Italian stars (of which no one is known here) have been summoned to reshoot the play. Unlike Ozon’s movie skits 7 women and a mystery set in the 1930s and there are some elements that reference the #MeToo era. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to let this Italian variant out of the shadow of the French classic, which is mainly due to the faulty script.

Some women are heading to a Christmas dinner in a spacious country house. The very rich Marcello wants to spend Christmas with his family from a distance, but the host’s corpse puts a damper on the festive spirit. As the title makes clear, there are seven women, each of whom has a motive for Marcello’s murder.

His wife Margherita has been unfaithful to him for years, his sister-in-law Agostina has been secretly in love with him since her teens, the greedy mother-in-law only cares about her drink and the ties under her mattress, there is a sexy maid for whom the man he had a keen eye, a sensual lover, and two daughters who only benefit from their father’s death.

So all the ingredients are there for a thrilling whodunit in the best Agatha Christie tradition, but unfortunately nothing is done with it. There is some bickering back and forth in Italian for about seventy minutes to get to a rather predictable and nonsensical plot, but more 7 women and a mystery does not stop

It was predictable that the noisy and almost chaotic Italian approach would lose out to the French charm, but the biggest disappointment turns out to be that Alessandro Genovesi focuses too much on the sets, making it feel more like you’re being shown everything. a design museum. Anyone who likes feuding Italian checkers or can’t get enough of gold-rimmed coffee cups will be able to get something out of this Italian gathering, but those who prefer quality are better off opting for the French variant.

7 women and a mystery can be seen in Netflix.