François Ozon offers up, for specialized tastes, a cinephiliac musical-comedy whodunit, set at a snowbound country house in the late Fifties or early Sixties, with an all-female cast (exclusive of the faceless male corpse). The deliberate staginess and theatricality -- it was adapted from a forgotten play by Robert Thomas -- recall Alain Resnais's Mélo and Smoking/No Smoking, and the intermittent outbursts of song recall that same director's Life Is a Bed of Roses and Same Old Song. But Resnais, who always has more layers than a napoleon, was up to a good deal more in those films than just a campy celebration, a fluttering appreciation, of a Gallic gallery of screen divas (Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, the octogenarian Danielle Darrieux, et al.) and their arsenal of artifice (clothes, hair, makeup). That's not to say there's nothing here to celebrate and appreciate. Huppert, the truest trouper of the group, continues to impress and amaze, contorting herself into the straight lines, sharp angles, clipped speech, and abrupt movements of a battle-axe spinster in the mold of Judith Anderson, Agnes Moorehead, Margaret Hamilton. And her impulsive Ugly Duckling transformation ("I just felt like looking pretty") is hands-down the high point of hilarity. Ardant, the last of the ensemble to make her entrance, is quite breathtaking, too, as an Ava Gardner-esque voluptuary, although she hardly needs to turn herself inside-out for the purpose. And the less-known Ludivine Sagnier as the Sandra Dee teen in lime-green capris holds her own with the grande dames, and even steals a couple of scenes or three. All of the songs -- eight altogether, one big solo per performer -- are good fun, and more or less proper to the period. Until the last, they give you something to look forward to during the grinding plot mechanics of who did what to whom and when and where and why. This chugging, groaning, sputtering acting vehicle requires its eight passengers repeatedly to get out and push. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd