After his wife dies, 55-year-old businessman Philip Emmenthal, at the prompting of his playboy son Storey, populates his Geneva villa with eight and a half concubines. Three are from Kyoto, where Storey manages Pachinco palaces. Each has a distinctive personality: a nun, a child bearer, a gambler, a student of Kabuki, a horsewoman with a pet pig, a maid. Philip throws off his strait-laced and repressed attitudes, immersing himself in pleasure. After about a year, the women begin to assert their own power. Side adventures pre-figure the household’s breakup, and the women depart in one way or another, one at at time. Philip’s fate is in the hands of Palmira, his favorite.
Release Date: 10 December 1999Runtime: 118 min
Stars:
- Amanda Plummer
- Annie Shizuka Inoh
- Barbara Sarafian
- Claire Johnston
- Don Warrington
- Elizabeth Berrington
- John Standing
- Kirina Mano
- Manna Fujiwara
- Matthew Delamere
- Myriam Muller
- Natacha Amal
- Polly Walker
- Toni Collette
- Vivian Wu
Director: Peter Greenaway
