Nine women struggle in their lives. Volatile Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo) is in LA County Jail. She blows up when her young daughter visits and the phone is broken. Pregnant Diana (Robin Wright Penn) meets former lover Damian (Jason Isaacs) at a supermarket. Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton) confronts her abusive stepfather. Couple Sonia (Holly Hunter) and Martin (Stephen Dillane) have a fight at the home of their friends Lisa (Molly Parker) and Damian (Jason Isaacs). Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) is trying to cope with her parents Ruth (Sissy Spacek) and sickly Larry (Ian McShane) who are not getting along. Ruth (Sissy Spacek) has an affair with drunken widower Henry (Aidan Quinn). Divorced Lorna (Amy Brenneman) deals with ex-husband Andrew (William Fichtner) during his second wife's funeral. Camille (Kathy Baker) is getting breast surgery for cancer while waiting with her husband Richard (Joe Mantegna). Maggie (Glenn Close) has a picnic with her daughter Maria (Dakota Fanning) in the cemetery.This is written and directed by Rodrigo García. As with other multi-story movies, there are some vignettes that I love more than others. Sandra in prison is riveting. None of the stories are anything I dislike. Every story has something interesting. These are a lot of great actresses.

"Nine Lives" is composed of a series of nine short stories that focus on the female condition. With an average of 11 or 12 minutes per segment shot in one continuous take, there is no time for resolution (except perhaps for the last story that occurs in a cemetery). Rather, the narratives demonstrate emotional conflicts in the lives of women who are unable to escape their circumstances. As each story stands on its own, an advantage is that the movie is easy to watch. There is neither a plot to ascertain nor any character progression; it is not difficult to understand the situations. But we do not always know where these women are going.The first vignette ("Sandra") features an incarcerated Hispanic-American woman (Elpidia Carrillo) who spends much of her screen time washing a prison floor. It is obvious that her emotional state – really her temper – has gotten her into trouble with the law. The second segment ("Diana") concerns a pregnant woman (Robin Wright Penn) who meets an old flame in a supermarket. The third part ("Holly") presents a distraught African-American woman (LisaGay Hamilton), acting most erratically, who has obviously been traumatized. Apparently she was sexually abused; she may have an unwelcome present for her father. The fourth episode ("Sonia") involves a woman (Holly Hunter) and her lover who blab confidential information to their two friends. The fifth vignette concerns "Samantha," a mature and sweet teenager (Amanda Seyfried) who acts as a peacemaker between her bickering parents. But her wings are indeed clipped.Next is "Lorna," a piece that involves a mute man who wants to have sexual intercourse with his ex-wife at the wake of his second spouse. She (Amy Brenneman) does not protest too much. Number seven ("Ruth") involves a married middle-aged woman contemplating a tryst with a man at a hotel. The penultimate episode is about "Camille," an angry woman (Kathy Baker) who upbraids her loving husband while she awaits her mastectomy at a hospital. Believe me, her sedative comes none too soon. The husband (Joe Mantegna) has the patience of a saint. The final part, the best one, concerns a bereaved and aging woman "Maggie" (Glenn Close) and daughter Maria (Dakota Fanning) who have a picnic at a cemetery. The little girl's lunch consists of exactly one bite of a sandwich and a single grape. And Maggie's use of an obscenity in front of a child and Maria's non-reaction is a dead giveaway (no pun intended). The story's conclusion is obvious but this writer will not reveal it here. By the way, Dakota Fanning, who was 11 years old in 2005, looks no older than eight or nine. This observation implies this last vignette had to have been filmed a few years earlier. Some folks, like Sissy Spacek, appear in two episodes that may be connected (parts five and seven). Spacek is a fine actress. Sidney Poitier's daughter Sydney (Vanessa in "Holly"), who looks just like him, is very attractive. Amanda Seyfried is certainly one of the planet's beautiful people; she began her silver screen career in "Mean Girls." The artistic performances are fine in "Nine Lives," and so much emotion is demonstrated. A way of brief description is "so much feeling in such a tight space." But as the vignette endings are ambiguous, traditionalists who like long features with resolutions may not appreciate this one.

one who want to see what it's mean "clean acting art" has to see this movie. I am sure that this movie will be one of the best example of how close can the cinema be to the theater (in the good aspect). the movie bring to us nine short stories about women in relation to their daughters, old lovers, fathers, and husbands. the power of this movie coming from the quality of the actresses who play their rules so naturally, so you believe that it is a real their own story. there is no different the age of the actress: all of them present great acting skills, and show us all the personal feeling woman have, until the most intimal senses they feel. I have notice that the common mood this movie show is sadness about the female world. there is no one joke in the film neither a relief thought about the price they have to pay in our world.

Rodrigo Garcia's "Nine Lives" raises the question of just how emotionally invested a viewer can become in a character who appears on screen for no more than ten or a dozen minutes throughout the course of a movie. And what happens if ALL the main characters show up for that little a time? For this is the case with "Nine Lives," a compilation of vignettes about nine virtually unconnected ladies, each of whom is struggling with issues common to women in a modern world. Some are coping with messy relationships, others with regrets about past actions, still others with health issues and the looming possibility of death. Even though the stories abut slightly on one another from time to time, each exists essentially as a stand-alone sketch able to function without the others.The main problem with a movie like "Nine Lives" is that, for all the insights it offers into life and human relationships (and they are many), it simply can't develop its characters to any appreciable extent in the time it has allotted them. Just as we are becoming engaged by a particular woman and her situation, the movie shuts us down by cutting away to the next segment. This is really no criticism of the movie per se - which is a well written, well acted and well directed piece of lyrical film-making - but the structure dilutes our interest and robs the film of the cumulative force it might have had were the individual stories fleshed out to feature length.Still, given the limitations, this is a film filled with flavorful moments and fine performances from a large and gifted cast that includes Sissy Spacek, Mary Kay Place, Glenn Close, Dakota Fanning, Holly Hunter, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Robin Wright Penn, Joe Mantegna and Aiden Quinn, among many others. And the final moments are so tender, poignant and touching that they carry the film to a level where it transcends artifice and makes a genuine human connection with its audience. Thus, despite the reservations one might have about the film as a whole, the parts are more than compelling enough to make it well worth watching.