Review 7 Donne e un Mistero [Netflix]

Direction: Alessandro Genovesi | Scenario: Alessandro Genovesi, Lisa Nur Sultan | cast: Margherita Buy (Margherita), Diana Del Bufalo (Susanna), Sabrina Impacciatore (Agostina), Benedetta Porcaroli (Caterina), Micaela Ramazzotti (Veronica), and others | Playing time: 84 minutes | Year: 2021

Who after Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery If you feel like even more detective fun, you can continue with the Italian on Netflix 7 Donne e un Misteroin which seven women are suspected of murdering a family patriarch who is found on his bed with a knife in his back.

It is a story that may sound familiar to film buffs, because the Source material is a play by Robert Thomas from 1958 that was already filmed in 2002 by François Ozon. Thanks to the parade of stars with film divas such as Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart and Fanny Ardant, 8 Women twenty years ago a box office success with the French public.

This golden formula could also work well in Italian, director Alessandro Genovesi must have thought. And so an Italian star cast (of whom no one is known here) has been summoned to re-film the play. Unlike Ozon’s movie plays 7 Donne e un Mistero set in the 1930s and there are some elements that refer to the MeToo era. Unfortunately, it is not enough to let this Italian variant come out of the shadow of the French classic, which is mainly due to the flawed script.

A few women are on their way to a Christmas dinner in a spacious country house. The very rich Marcello wants to spend Christmas with his somewhat estranged family, but the dead body of the host 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, sister-in-law Agostina has been secretly in love with him since her teens, the greedy mother-in-law only cares about her booze and the bonds under her mattress, there is a sexy maid that the man had an eye for, a sensual mistress and two daughters who both benefit only from their father’s death.

So all the ingredients are there for an exciting whodunnit in the very 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 arrive at a fairly predictable and meaningless plot, but more 7 Donne e un Mistero not for.

It was foreseeable that the noisy, almost chaotic Italian approach would lose out to the French spry charm, but the biggest disappointment turns out to be that Alessandro Genovesi focuses far too much on the sets, so that it seems more like you are being shown around a design museum. Anyone who likes bickering Italian ladies or can’t get enough of coffee cups with gold rims will be able to get something out of this Italian get-together, but those who prefer quality are better off going for the French version.

7 Donne e un Mistero can be seen on Netflix.