Based on a 1960's crime play, 8 Women is a tour-de-force for some of the grandes dames of French cinema, including Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart and the agelessly beautiful Danielle Darrieux.

I recently sat down to an alfresco lunch on the sun-drenched terrace of San Francisco's elegant Ritz Carlton Hotel with director François Ozon to discuss 8 Women, on the eve of its American release.

TG: Was 8 Women an effort to relax after the serious tone of (Sous Le Sable) Under The Sand?
FO: It was not a relaxed film. With 8 actresses together it was not relaxing. Sometimes it's easier to make a dramatic movie than a comedy because of the rhythm of the film, because you have to be funny. It's always easier to be sad than funny. For me Under The Sand was a very relaxed movie because I had only one star in front of me, Charlotte Rampling.

TG: How did you come to cast Charlotte?
FO: I wanted a beautiful woman of fifty years old and an actress who would wear a swimsuit on the beach. If I had asked Catherine Deneuve to do the same part she would have asked if she could have something to hide her body-these kind of things. It was important to me to show the body of a beautiful woman who is fifty years old. And sometimes it's good to cast an actress that everyone has forgotten.

TG: Did you remember her work in The Night Porter and The Verdict or had she done a project in Europe that brought her to mind?
FO: Yes, she made a beautiful picture for the Japanese director Oshima, Max Mon Amour, a love story between her and a monkey-a very strange movie. And to French people she always plays very perverse characters, very dangerous women. For the first time in her career she played a very human character. It was very new for her and I think that was why the French audience was so surprised to see her in Under The Sand and may have contributed to the success of the film.

TG: In watching the film for a second time in preparation for our conversation I was reminded of how much you got out of her with so little dialogue. Did you see that capacity to silently project emotion in her before you started shooting or did it evolve on the set?
FO: I think that Charlotte Rampling is an incredible actress and sometimes you just have to film her and you understand everything. For me she is like the actresses of Ingmar Bergman; they have beautiful faces and you can see many things happening inside. You don't need to express feelings with dialogue. You can see all of her feelings on her face.

TG: Do you think that gives the audience an opportunity to project their feelings onto her?
FO: Of course, because the story is very simple. A story of mourning is something everyone can relate to. And for the first time, I wanted to give the audience an opportunity to identify with a character in one of my films.

TG: Did you always intend to end the film ambiguously?
FO: Yes because when you mourn it is never over. It is something you have inside and you don't just suddenly say okay, it's finished. It was a love story, perhaps, a never-ending love story.

TG: Who were the directors who most influenced your work?
FO: Douglas Sirk. He was Danish, lived in Switzerland and then came to Hollywood.

TG: Which films?
FO: Imitation of Life and all of the films with Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman. I love his movies. They are very simple but very stylish. I love the color, the mise- en-scene. He makes a Greek tragedy out of a simple story.

TG: How did you come to make 8 Women?
FO: I was looking for a topic with only women. And it wasn't easy. My agent found this forgotten, old-fashioned play from the sixties. I didn't really like the play but I liked the pitch-8 women together, one man is killed and one of the eight is the killer. But I realized that the structure of the play would allow me to make observations about women, about glamour and about family.

TG: Was it difficult to assemble all of these actresses for the film?
FO: No, because of the success of Under The Sand.

TG: Were these women all your first choices for the roles?
FO: Yes, they were my dream cast.

TG: The use of color is spectacular: Catherine in a green dress, sitting on a mustard sofa, Fanny (Ardant) opening a black coat to reveal a violent scarlet dress. Were those your ideas or your costume and set designers?
FO: It was my vision. My costume designer and I saw many Hollywood films of the fifties and were inspired by the "New Look" fashions of Christian Dior and we tried to give each actress a color, like a flower at the beginning of the film. It was a way to give a sense of technicolor because it is no longer possible. I didn't want to make a realistic film, I wanted to make an artificial movie.

TG: Was it a dream of yours to work with Danielle Darrieux?
FO: Yes, I wanted her to be in Under The Sun as the mother-in-law, but it's good thing she turned me down because if she had suddenly appeared on screen you would have seen Danielle and not the character.