8+1⁄2 Women is a 1999 comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway and starring John Standing, Matthew Delamere, and Vivian Wu.

[2] After the death of his wife Amelia, wealthy businessman Philip Emmenthal and his son Storey open their own private harem in their family residence in Geneva.

The website's consensus reads: "Peter Greenaway's exploration of sexual exploitation exhibits his fondness for breaking taboos, but this seedy exercise's ideas never come together into a satisfying whole.

"[6] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 36 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

Trying to imagine other kinds of comedies handling the material, I ran it through Monty Python, Steve Martin and Woody Allen before realizing it has its roots in Buster Keaton--whose favorite comic ploy was to overcome obstacles by applying pure logic and ignoring social conventions or taboos.