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.

8½ Women is a 1999 comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway, and starring John Standing, Matthew Delamere, and Vivian Wu. The international co-production (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany) was entered into the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

After the death of his wife (Claire Johnston), wealthy businessman Philip Emmenthal (John Standing) and his son Storey (Matthew Delamere) open their own private harem in their family residence in Geneva (they get the idea while watching Federico Fellini''s 8½ and after Storey is "given" a woman, Simato (Shizuka Inoh), to waive her pachinko debts). They sign one-year contracts with eight (and a half) women to this effect.

The women each have a gimmick (one is a nun, another a kabuki performer, etc.). Philip soon becomes dominated by his favourite of the concubines, Palmira (Polly Walker), who has no interest in Storey as a lover, despite what their contract might stipulate. Philip dies, the concubines'' contracts expire, and Storey is left alone with Giulietta (the titular "½", played by Manna Fujiwara) and of course the money and the houses.

While the film deals with and graphically describes diverse sexual acts in conversation, the film does not feature any sex scenes as such.