Le Cuisinier, le voleur, sa femme et son amant

With the Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover, Greenaway creates a self-contained world that is both a fabrication and abstraction of reality, but also an extremist reflection (nee, microcosm) of British society in the nineteen-eighties. The characters that he chooses to put forward to the audience as protagonists are archetypes of social and political caricatures that we would find in that particular decade; but heightened to conform to the over-the-top opulence/pestilence found central to the plot. His ability to craft characters and situations that resonate beyond the context of a particular scenario, coupled with his bitterness and unwillingness to conform is what sets him up as a satirist of serious note. He also elevates the film beyond the realms of mere art-house experimentation by fashioning a seriously funny script, which has ample opportunities for central character Albert Spica to prove himself the ultimate charismatic bully - part cockney hard man, part pantomime villain - who is never less than compulsively terrifying.

The plot is a simple construct centred on the theme of revenge and the need for personal freedom. This is mixed in with the socio-political undertones as well as Greenaway's many references to art, theatre, film and literature. It is also elevated by the impeccable cinematic qualities that we hold synonymous with the director's work. Everything here is about pushing things beyond the reasonable limitations; so we have a stunningly intricate set that is both theatrically simplistic, but also as other-worldly as anything from the work of say Gilliam or Jeunet. The costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier scream over-the-top chic, whilst often mirroring the use of colour employed by the production designers. Greenaway even breaks continuity by having Helen Mirren's costumes change colour as she moves through each room of the restaurant, so that we have a green dress in the kitchen, a red dress in the dinning area (inspired by Hitchcock's vertigo no less) and a white dress in the lavatory. It's an audacious move, but one that pays off in the creation of a completely self-contained world; something that is further established by Sacha Vierny's sumptuous cinematography and the wonderfully bombastic music of the ever-excellent Michael Nyman.

Some have clearly found the film's various abstractions problematic (yes, it is theatrical, yes it is occasionally shocking, and yes, it does evolve in a world of its own ostentatious creation). But it's also as artistic a film as you can get; a fact that some here have disputed. The reason that some define this as artistic refers to the use of colour, light and composition. The architecture of the sets too, and the way in which the production designers have chosen to dress them also adds to the artistic stylisation of the film. These factors are important to the narrative, as they are symbolic to what Greenaway is trying to convey, as well as what the characters are all about. Because of this, the design of the film becomes AS important as the framework, if not more so. But this film is more than a mere arty exploration; it's funny and intelligent and features a slew of great performances from a wonderfully eclectic cast. Michael Gambon as the thief Spica gives a grandstand performance to rival his own Phillip Marlow from The Singing Detective; hamming things up spectacularly but still retaining that much needed sense of humanity. The same can be said of the other principals too.

Mirren as the wife exudes a quite and restrained sexuality in what must be her best performance, whist Richard Bohringer as the cook is in some represents the linchpin/catalyst for the film. Elsewhere we find everyone from Tim Roth to Ian Dury popping up to give the film some added character and easily furthering the film's already cult appeal. This was a turning point for Greenaway; a move towards the more expressive, elaborate and self-contained style of film-making found in films like Prospero's Books and the Baby of Maçon and away from the more easy to digest classics like the Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers and A Zed and Two Noughts.

This contains spoilers.

OK... so some people think this thing is ART. I don't get it.

The film's basic story is old: a bored woman wants to escape her rich, dominating, unfeeling and unintelligent husband and has an affair with a poor but sensitive man. Husband finds out and seeks revenge. Wife retaliates. This plot line has been done MANY times. Yawn.

The graphic violence is gratuitous and adds nothing to the film's story except to over emphasize how brutal the world of this couple is, show how mean the husband is, AND to give the "enlightened" movie "critics" something to which they can point as evidence that this is not a film for the "average" audience. The violence is so overdone, however, that its shock value wears off quickly, and the climactic "banquet" scene therefore has no real impact on the now numbed audience. Yawn.

The cinematography, lighting, costumes, sets, featured art pieces, and almost all visual aspects of the film are spectacularly lush - but like a heavy, rich meal they tend to overpower and make one sleepy or not very alert. What the point of the color changes in the costuming between the dining room, lavatory, kitchen, and garage sets was meant to do except to work as a gimmick to wake up the audience - or give more fodder to the "enlightened" ones who wanted to claim that this was something only those in tune with "Art" could understand - is never disclosed. Yawn.

In the end, only those who claimed to be "enlightened" applauded the film as a work of "Art". The rest of us unwashed masses either woke up when the "enlightened" ones applauded or numbly sat in our seats wondering why we spent money and wasted time to see this "artistic" piece of trash.

Here's the weird secret of this movie: you might actually enjoy it.

Peter Greenaway once commented, "film is too important to be left in the hands of story- tellers." Like almost everything Godard ever said, it's a preposterous statement that ought to be heeded.

As a filmmaker Greenaway has always delighted in puzzle-pictures; from the twin-based symmetry of "A Zed and Two Naughts" to the subliminal counting-game of "Drowning by Numbers" to the mad frames-within-frames of "Prospero's Books" his films resemble nothing so much as one of Graeme Base's wonderful children's' books ("The Eleventh Hour" and "Animalia" for instance) brought to life. Plus, of course, a great deal of nudity and assorted nastiness-- enough to get the works of one of the most original filmmakers living a rather sordid reputation.

So, once you've recovered from the visceral shock of watching "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" the first time, take a step back and watch it again. Yeah, I mean that, do it. Look at it this time as you might a painting by Heironymus Bosch: what appears to be a madman's chaotic hellscape turns out to have a precise allegorical order, and contains such a wealth of symbolism that one viewing cannot possibly be enough to absorb it all. A scene that may seem gratuitously horrific (a naked couple enclosed in a truck full of rotting meat-- probably the moment that jolted me the most) in fact reveals a medievalist's precision (Adam and Eve, cast from Paradise for the First Big Sin, are suddenly subject to the corruption of the flesh). An abstract concept is thus made perfectly and accessibly literal.

Different viewers may prefer to see this movie as religious allegory, political screed, or wry class commentary. The fact is it is all of these, and probably more. The irony of Greenaway's quote above is that he is in fact story-telling on several levels at once. (It's the same irony in the comment that "Seinfeld" was a "show about nothing" when in fact there was more going on per episode than in any other ten sitcoms. It just wasn't "simple.")

In response to criticism over the bloodshed in his movies, Godard once said "It isn't blood, it's red." Meaning: it's all part of a composition, the way color is used on a painter's canvas. It's there for a point, just like Greenaway's explicit yet elegant shocks. With that mind, watch this movie, and enjoy it. It's sharp, gruesomely witty, and as remarkable to look at as almost anything in the Met. If you can handle really thinking, you can handle this, and we all can, can't we?

I sat transfixed by this film's ability to become increasingly depraved, always without any redeeming quality whatsoever. We would have left except that I became fascinated by the ability of the director and writer to hit bottom and then keep drilling. The story is familiar enough but there are no protagonists. There really are no antagonists either. Just a bunch of people you care nothing about doing things you don't want to know about. If a friend did this stuff to another human and wanted to tell you about it, you would scream for him/her to stop.

To top it off it has a score by Michael Nyman who had just enough talent to write one bad film score and retreads it for every film that a producer is stupid enough to hire him to score.

My introduction to Greenaway was `Prospero's Books,' which I rate very highly. I next saw `The Pillow Book,' which also was magic. I now delve into this earlier work, which is before Greenaway became master of overlayed windows. And also before he developed (at least in the two films mentioned) a clean sense of layering allegory.

In this early film the sense of allegory is simplistic, and the notion of narrative is largely abandoned. All in all, this is a cleaner film. Greenaway's fulcrum is the creation of a massive clockworks kitchen with dozens of concurrent, interrelated processes. Everything revolves around this, or more precisely the vision of this. Around this center, we see both vile and sublime forces acting on the kitchen, which is a sort of metalevel over the world from which creation emanates.

I suppose many will remember some of the more disturbing incidental images. Not me. I'll remember that extraordinary kitchen.