'Nine': Eight parts clamor, one part movie magic

There's a moment of perfect movie-musical magic in Rob Marshall's "Nine" that reminds us of what miracles can be wrought with just an actor, a tune and a camera. And then there's the rest of it, but we'll get to that.

That magical bit, which to my mind is almost worth the ticket price, is Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose") singing "My Husband Makes Movies." She's the wife of an Italian film director (Daniel Day-Lewis) who neglects her for his mistress (Penélope Cruz) and his work.

In the song, she ponders how her husband is different from other men, and how their marriage has changed. It's a quiet passage in a mostly frenetic film, and Marshall slows things down and lets Cotillard create something delicate and devastating in the moment, keeping it very simple and very small, revealing a character's heart to us through song. "Long ago ... ," she sings of the past, "someone else ago,... " and her voice breaks, just a tiny bit, remembering. You think she's alone there, and we're alone with her, and the rest of the movie and the world slips away.

And "Nine" could almost float on that moment for the rest of the movie, but it too soon evaporates in favor of the "Chicago" remake that Marshall seems otherwise hellbent on creating.

"Nine," which premiered on Broadway in 1982, is a strange bird of a musical: Based on Fellini's "8 ½," it features one man (the film director, Guido Contini) and the various women who revolve around him: his wife, his mistress, his mother (Sophia Loren), his movie-star muse (Nicole Kidman), his designer and confidante (Judi Dench), a journalist (Kate Hudson) and a prostitute from his childhood (Fergie).

Its score features some pretty tunes, but its lyrics are often awkward (the movie solves this problem by not letting us hear a lot of them, through cuts and some deafening sound), and overall it's an odd choice to bring to the screen. (OK, if you want to play a round of Broadway Musicals Of the Past Few Decades That Might Make Interesting Movies, I'll say "City of Angels." Your turn.)

But Marshall seems to have been drawn to the material because it suits the exact style he brought to his 2002 (and much better) "Chicago": musical numbers presented as fantasy sequences, writhing Fosse-esque choreography performed by troupes of women in lingerie, stylized theatrical lighting, flashy quick cuts.

A few vivid performances emerge from the clamor: Hudson's irresistibly sunny fashionista; Dench's crisp former showgirl; Cruz's wounded lover; Day-Lewis' self-absorbed yet magnetic auteur. But it's Cotillard who remains when all the "Nine" noise and lights have faded, reminding us that simplicity is sometimes the main ingredient for magic.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com