Nine (2009)

Rob Marshall's Nine assembles an extraordinary roster of women and then studies them the way a jeweler studies inventory. Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie orbit Daniel Day-Lewis's blocked Italian director, each allotted a song and a costume. The cast is female to a degree rare in a studio musical, and a few of these performers push against their assignments, Cotillard especially, carving real grief out of a thankless wife. The camera, though, keeps returning to the same admiring male vantage, arranging each actress as a pose or a provocation. Women are everywhere in this film. Questions about them are not.

On the era's social questions, the film is silent. Race never enters the frame. The Italian setting of 1965 is fond scenery, not history under review. No economic argument is made, no environmental conscience surfaces, and disability, neurodivergence, and the politics of the body go unmentioned, though the body receives a great deal of unexamined attention. The story is driven by one man's appetite and the wreckage it leaves. His women sing of love and disappointment. Nobody lectures.

As cinema, Nine is polished and empty, a verdict the reviews reached quickly and the years have not disturbed. Marshall brought discipline from Chicago and left conviction at home. The numbers are staged cleanly. The screenplay sighs. Day-Lewis, an actor of frightening commitment, plays a narcissist with such conviction that the film never finds a reason to disagree with him, and its closing forgiveness lands as a shrug. The women get their moments. The man gets his ending.