# 8½ Women (8 1/2の女たち)
**8½ Women** (8 1/2の女たち) is a 1999 comedy-drama film written and directed by [Peter Greenaway](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-greenaway), in which a widowed Geneva businessman and his son fill their household with eight and a half concubines after seeing [Federico Fellini](https://www.edgepedia.org/federico-fellini)'s *8½* (1963). It was screened in competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and stars [John Standing](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-standing), Matthew Delamere, Vivian Wu, Polly Walker, Toni Collette, and Amanda Plummer.[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and screenplay | Peter Greenaway[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) |
| Festival and release | In Competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival (premiered 22 May 1999); UK release 10 December 1999; US release 26 May 2000[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) |
| Principal cast | John Standing (Philip Emmenthal), Matthew Delamere (Storey), Vivian Wu, Polly Walker, Toni Collette, Amanda Plummer[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) |
| Key crew | Cinematography by Sacha Vierny and Reinier van Brummelen; production design by Wilbert van Dorp and Emi Wada[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) |
| Critical reception | 41% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 37 reviews; audience score about 54%[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women) |
## Spoilers
### Premise and plot
Philip Emmenthal, a 55-year-old wealthy Genevan businessman, inherits eight and a half Pachinko parlors, the gambling houses found on Japanese city streets, and his son Storey agrees to manage them.[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) After the death of Philip's wife, Storey tries to distract his father from grief by introducing him to the women in the films of Fellini, especially *Fellini Eight and a Half*. Father and son then imagine creating a private bordello of their own in their large Geneva family house.[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/)
The result is a household of eight and a half concubines, three of them from Kyoto, where Storey manages the Pachinko palaces. Each woman has a distinctive persona: a nun, a child bearer, a gambler, a student of [Kabuki](https://www.edgepedia.org/kabuki), a horsewoman with a pet pig, a maid.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women) After about a year, the women begin to assert their own power.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women)
### Cast and characters
The women collected by father and son come from Japan and Europe. The Japanese group includes [Vivian Wu](https://www.edgepedia.org/vivian-wu) as Kito, a headstrong but emotionally repressed businesswoman who had also appeared in Greenaway's *The Pillow Book*; Shizuka Inoh (伊能静), saddled with gambling debts; and Kirina Mano, fascinated with female impersonators.[3](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/few-reasons-to-love-8-1-2-women-3060533.php) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/05/26/the-greenaway-effect/ed4691a4-8337-4df7-a92f-0cc6f385fa67/) The European group includes [Polly Walker](https://www.edgepedia.org/polly-walker) as Palmira, a strong-willed woman who finds Philip more alluring than Storey; [Toni Collette](https://www.edgepedia.org/toni-collette) as Griselda, a Norwegian bank cashier who sets out to become a nun; Amanda Plummer; Barbara Sarafian as a maid angered by Philip's rejection; and Natacha Amal as a woman obsessed with the experience of being pregnant.[3](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/few-reasons-to-love-8-1-2-women-3060533.php) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/05/26/the-greenaway-effect/ed4691a4-8337-4df7-a92f-0cc6f385fa67/)
## The title and its Fellini source
The film is an homage to Fellini's *8½*, the surreal classic in which [Marcello Mastroianni](https://www.edgepedia.org/marcello-mastroianni) plays a film director fraught with fears, troubled love affairs, and self-doubt while making a movie. In Greenaway's film, after seeing Fellini's work at a Geneva arthouse, Philip asks, "How many film directors make films to satisfy their sexual fantasies?" and Storey answers, "I would imagine most of them."[3](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/few-reasons-to-love-8-1-2-women-3060533.php)
The fraction in the title is embodied by Giulietta (Manna Fujiwara), a simple but mysterious woman with amputated legs.[4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/05/26/the-greenaway-effect/ed4691a4-8337-4df7-a92f-0cc6f385fa67/) The Washington Post's Desson Howe read the women not as victims but as figures who will not be bound by the men's patriarchal expectations: like the Pachinko machines in the Japanese gambling parlors where part of the film is set, they are far from calculable, "in effect, games of chance."[4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/05/26/the-greenaway-effect/ed4691a4-8337-4df7-a92f-0cc6f385fa67/) Howe also noted that Greenaway takes Fellini's themes of sexual power, miscommunication between men and women, and the solipsism of the artist and transmutes them into his own recurring obsessions: class, chance, taboo, self-reflection, art as metaphor for existence, and the human form.[4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/05/26/the-greenaway-effect/ed4691a4-8337-4df7-a92f-0cc6f385fa67/)
## Production and release
The Cannes festival record lists the producing countries as the United Kingdom, Germany, and [Luxembourg](https://www.edgepedia.org/luxembourg), with a duration of 120 minutes.[1](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/) Japan received it last, on 18 November 2000.[5](https://eiga.com/movie/48280/)
## Reception
The film divided critics and found little support overall. The hooting it received at Cannes was noted by *The Independent*'s Gilbert Adair, whose own review called the film "a horror" and argued that where Fellini's film was about a terminally stalled artist, Greenaway's was by one.[6](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-spot-the-male-chauvinist-pig-1131842.html) A survey of Greenaway's career states that accusations of misogyny resurfaced with *8½ Women*, a film which found very few supporters.[7](https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Shail%2C%20British-Film-Directors-A-Critical-Guide.pdf) The *San Francisco Examiner*'s G. [Allen Johnson](https://www.edgepedia.org/allen-johnson), reviewing the US release, called it boring and objected that a film structured around a household of women shows no real sex scenes, though he acknowledged Greenaway as a daring, constantly experimenting filmmaker who is hit-or-miss.[3](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/few-reasons-to-love-8-1-2-women-3060533.php)
Not all responses were negative. Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars, suggesting it be viewed as "a slowed-down, mannered, tongue-in-cheek silent comedy, skewed by Greenaway's anger and desire to manipulate."[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women) A later retrospective review in *Out* magazine called Greenaway one of cinema's most innovative visual compositionists and the film's breezy tone his least pretentious work in years.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women) On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 41% on the Tomatometer from 37 reviews, with a critics consensus that its exploration of sexual exploitation exhibits Greenaway's fondness for breaking taboos but that its ideas never come together into a satisfying whole; the audience score stands at about 54%.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women) An Encyclopedia.com career survey judged it arguably Greenaway's most disappointing feature, inconsequential and boring, a trial even for his most ardent supporters.[8](https://encyclopedia-loadbalancer-1-1782916326.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/people/literature-and-arts/film-and-television-biographies/peter-greenaway)
## Place in Greenaway's career
Greenaway, a trained painter whose work sets meticulously composed images within predetermined numerical, alphabetical, or pictorial structures, had made *The Pillow Book* (1996) with Vivian Wu immediately before this film.[8](https://encyclopedia-loadbalancer-1-1782916326.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/people/literature-and-arts/film-and-television-biographies/peter-greenaway) • [9](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) *8½ Women* continued his practice of frontal nudity of both sexes and his stated wish to be counted among "excellent pornographic writers," while its commercial gross of $424,123 reflected the narrowing audience for his features after the negative reception of *[The Baby of Mâcon](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-baby-of-macon)* (1993) had made his theatrical releases more sporadic.[9](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) In a 2001 interview around the film's release, Greenaway defended the nude in all its sizes and shapes as part of the phenomenon of the events of life, not just the 16- to 24-year-old Californian female.[10](https://www.hollywood.com/general/8-12-women-peter-greenaway-interview-57162840)
## References
1. [8 1/2 WOMEN, Cinéma de Demain, Festival de Cannes](https://cinemadedemain.festival-cannes.com/en/f/8-1-2-women/)
2. [8 1/2 Women, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/8_12_women)
3. [Few reasons to love '8 1/2 Women', San Francisco Examiner via SFGate (19 May 2000)](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/few-reasons-to-love-8-1-2-women-3060533.php)
4. [The Greenaway Effect, The Washington Post (25 May 2000)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/05/26/the-greenaway-effect/ed4691a4-8337-4df7-a92f-0cc6f385fa67/)
5. [ピーター・グリーナウェイ 8 1/2の女たち：作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/48280/)
6. [Film: Spot the male chauvinist pig, The Independent (12 December 1999)](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-spot-the-male-chauvinist-pig-1131842.html)
7. [Andrew Shail, British Film Directors: A Critical Guide (Greenaway entry)](https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Shail%2C%20British-Film-Directors-A-Critical-Guide.pdf)
8. [Peter Greenaway, Encyclopedia.com](https://encyclopedia-loadbalancer-1-1782916326.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/people/literature-and-arts/film-and-television-biographies/peter-greenaway)
9. [Where to begin with Peter Greenaway, BFI (31 October 2022)](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway)
10. ["8 1/2 Women": Peter Greenaway Interview, Hollywood.com (21 August 2001)](https://www.hollywood.com/general/8-12-women-peter-greenaway-interview-57162840)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 1995 to 1999 › Black and satirical comedies › Released in 1999*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license