At the best cinema in London this evening - The Electric in Portobello Road - to see Rob Marshall's 'Nine'. We'd booked armchairs with footstools and grabbed some suitably Italian drinks before the show started. It's the movie musical that parallels Fellini's 8 1/2 about the trials and tribulations of a director with writer's block attempting the ninth movie.
Stylishly 60's Italian, with little Alfa sports cars, perpetual sun-glasses and glamour the Sartorialist would envy, this was a cinema spectacle. I didn't know what I was getting in advance, and about a third of the way through realised it was a series of cameos by the women connected with Daniel Day-Lewis as the enigmatic and conflicted maestro Guido. At around the same moment I decided it wasn't so much a musical as a modern-day opera. Art house opera marketed as big screen musical, maybe?
All new songs (I think) and flashily sassily directed choreography which sometimes tips more than a wink to Bob Fosse. My sense was that the songs need to be heard a couple of times to really sink in, maybe because they are new rather than Moulin Rouge or Mamma Mia style implants of existing pop.
I'll be one of the people who enjoyed this show, although my sense is it will be divided. I liked the homage to 60's cinema, the graininess of some of the film, the wide open lenses with liquid backgrounds. The way that Daniel Day-Lewis played the director without a script or any ideas, but who could function charmingly on auto-pilot through the press calls.
There's a roll call of well-known actresses as the women in his life, from Marion Cotillard as his wife, Penelope Cruz his mistress, Nicole Kidman as his muse, Sophia Loren as his mother, through Fergie, Kate Hudson and even Judy Dench as the wardrobe person.
This may have been a simple storyline, modest dialogue and some flashy set pieces. I'd put it closer to art house homage than the way it seems to have been marketed. On that level I think it works well.
Trailer here
