To get his juices flowing, in his mind Guido invokes the women who nurture and coddle him, among them his mother (Sophia Loren), mistress (Penélope Cruz), muse (Nicole Kidman), and wife (Marion Cotillard).
But they are so much more obedient in Guido's dreams than they are in real life, where they refuse to stay in the compartments to which he's relegated them. Like so many men, Guido can't reconcile the contradiction that dream women take direction and real women give it.
Marshall's handsomely wrought film aims to show how artists spin gold from such straw. But the movie, which costars Judi Dench as Guido's costumer/confidante, Kate Hudson as a journalist/groupie, and Fergie (of the Black Eyed Peas) as the earthiest of prostitutes, is essentially a girlie show purveying the seven flavors of womanhood from madonna to whore.
Here, Marshall, who enjoyed a freshman triumph with Chicago and endured a sophomore slump with Memoirs of a Geisha, doesn't so much build a musical drama as wrangle an indifferently paced variety show. There's little modulation to the musical numbers, most of which boast bump-and-grind choreography common to music videos and gentleman's-club revues. (It doesn't help the cause that Maury Yeston's songs are more functional than fun.) Without much in the way of musical or dramatic foreplay, the film gyrates from climax to climax.
Given its luscious cast and lush cinematography (which segues from arty black-and-white to voluptuous color, and not always because the monochrome suggests reality and color dream), Nine is gorgeous to look at. And, despite the film's overall failure to cohere, Day-Lewis, Cotillard, and Dench powerfully act their songs, giving a taste of the film that might have been - had their costars been directed to follow their example.
