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Classic author C.S. Lewis once wrote an essay stating that no children's story is worth the reading, viewing etcetera if it can only be enjoyed by children. I'd say this film is an easy one to hold up as a defence of his argument.

Around the age of five or six, I loved it, tracked it down only three or four years later and found it to be wet, poorly animated, dully and confusingly written, and with distressingly repetitive and awful songs (I'm looking t you, hi-cockalorum), showing a production aiming at joyful silliness and whimsy, but resulting with an ugly, twee, frustrating mess.

By all means, show this to your infant, but I would heartily recommend that you don't buy a copy or attempt to sit in on the viewing. If you want something set in the same era but with genuine charm and wit, go after 'Oliver Twist' or the BBC's brilliant adaptation of 'The Box of Delights'.

This fine film is written in an intelligent, multilayered way of such a degree and quality as I have only seen in top-notch theatre. Greenaway delivers a dark but intoxicating tale of decay, evolution and the crucial importance of symmetry.

The themes of this film emerge not only through Greenaway's script, but also through the images produced by his tight, clear directing. The choice of images and ability to linger on single shots suggests a creative mind as focused and obsessed as the characters he portrays.

As with many of Greenaway's works, this certainly isn't a film for anyone wanting a cheap thrill and easy satisfaction. Its particularly dark humour and images of accelerated decay and death are more likely to please those who prefer to view film as a medium of art than those seeking mere entertainment.

It is a very long time since a film has impressed me quite as much as this.