8½ Women

$8 1/2$ Women is a 1999 comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway and starring John Standing, Matthew Delamere, and Vivian Wu. An international co-production of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany, it was entered into the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot
After the death of his wife Amelia, wealthy businessman Philip Emmenthal and his son Storey open their own private harem in their family residence in Geneva. They get the idea while watching Federico Fellini's $8 1/2$ and after Storey is "given" a woman, Simato, to waive her pachinko debts. They sign one-year contracts with eight (and a half) women to this effect.

The women each have a gimmick (one is a nun, another a kabuki performer, etc.). Philip soon becomes dominated by his favorite of the concubines, Palmira, who has no interest in Storey as a lover, despite what their contract might stipulate. Philip dies, the concubines' contracts expire, and Storey is left alone with Giulietta (the titular as an amputee) and of course the money and the houses.

Note
While the film deals with and graphically describes diverse sexual acts in conversation, the film does not feature any sex scenes as such, though it does contain several instances of male nudity.

Production
Toni Collette said Peter Greenaway chose her by accident for the role of Griselda. "I went in for another part and I had just had my head shaved and I had a Buddha hanging around my neck. Afterwards I thought, 'This is going to teach me to go to an audition looking like that'."

Reception
$8 1/2$ Women received mixed reviews. As of November 2019 it holds a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and 36/100 (an average of critics' reviews) on Metacritic, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

The film opened at the box office at #50 with $92,000 and grossed $424,123 domestically.

In a rather positive review, Roger Ebert commented "Now how is this funny? Trying to imagine other kinds of comedies handling the material, I ran it through Monty Python, Steve Martin and Woody Allen before realizing it has its roots in Buster Keaton--whose favorite comic ploy was to overcome obstacles by applying pure logic and ignoring social conventions or taboos. Keaton would have tilted it more toward laughs, to be sure; Greenaway's humor always seems dour, and masks (not very well) a lot of hostility. But, yes, Keaton."