The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

First of all, I have to say that this film is one of my personal favorites, and that it is one of those things one must see during his or her lifetime. Truthfully, however, I first got into this film after hearing clips of the soundtrack on the Japanese version of Iron Chef, during a time before it was acquired by the Food Network. This film score, composed by the great post-minimalist Michael Nyman, is still one of the most haunting and soul-stirring scores in my opinion, if not the one of the most impressionable bodies of musical work ever. I still listen to the album on a weekly basis - it gets under your skin that way. The film itself is a piece of total art, as others have said. The sets are saturated with their singular color schemes (blue for the restaurant's exterior, green for the kitchen, white for the restrooms, and red for the main dining hall) , and people who have any sort of artistic training have valued and will continue to value this film as a character study of color. In this present age where most films present their interpretations of visual thrill through costly CG and SFX technologies, this film is a testament to how color can be a driving influence behind effective set design and cinematography. The principal actors, including the always amazing Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon, are first rate. Helen Mirren's Georgina is a truly heart-wrenching character, especially in the face of Gambon's portrayal of Albert Spica, a poor excuse for a human being and one of cinema's cruelest villains. The cook and lover are merely catalysts, serving to instigate the final act that is the undoing of Albert's overreaching tyranny. I suppose the anti-Thatcher sentiment is highly applicable to this film, but since I am not a British citizen, I feel that I cannot comment on this. However, I think the film's allegory can also be applied to other scenarios where a brutish figure uses violence and exploitation as a way to control others whose primary fault is only residing in the same physical/social/legal domain as the brute. In short, a masterpiece.

This is not art. So do not let your mind think that what you are viewing is acceptable because it is art. Its themes and emotions are too blatantly shoved in your face for it to be artistic. What you get instead is a compilation of vile characters, unspectacular sex scenes and unnecessarily crude violence. This film relentlessly forces scene after scene of ugly, debauched filth into your face, hiding behind the facade of art. there is nothing artsy about the sex scenes, between a respected actress (before i saw this film) and a man who later gets stuffed with pages from his books. The final, fatal blow though resides at the films finale, where director Greenaway unleashes perhaps the most nauseating and intolerable scene in cinema history. Cannibalism... in its most horrific form to date. The characters are shallow and two-dimensional and the plot is simply tasteless. The cinematography would normally be considered as good work but the colours and theatricalities of it all just add to the grotesque, debauched, pseudo-artistic. In short there are no redeeming qualities to the film. I apologise for the repeated use of the words 'art' and 'artistic' but they are words that I hear being used in conjunction with this film that desperately need to be retracted to avoid giving other artistic films a bad name. I am now left with a sickening feeling in my stomach having thought about this piece of vile filth for this long. Don't watch it.

Writer/Director Peter Greenaway teams up again with cinematographer Sacha Vierny and composer Michael Nyman, delivering a banquet of sound and colour, light and dark. And dark and dark. A simple if disturbing morality tale sits atop a canvas of grotesque characters, carefully-composed frames and revolting details. The restaurant setting forces analogues with a meal, and it's easy to oblige - a rather formal affair, bordering on pretentious, with its influences conspicuous - sumptuous, exotic, intoxicating, memorable, if perhaps too rich and over-long, and it plays havoc with the digestion. As acquired a taste as any of Greenaway's work, and by no means an unqualified triumph. This film does not deliver on all its promises. But at least they were big promises. Try a piece - if you don't like it, you can always go back to your burgers and fries. Nine out of ten. Notes: 1. Michael Gambon's "Albert Spica" (the Thief of the title) surely ranks as one of cinema's all-time nastiest villains. Sorry Darth - no cigar. 2. The title of this film has become a template for headlines in British newspapers, e.g. "The A, the B, his C and her D". Don't ask me why. 3. "Cook/Thief" is one of four similar and inter-related films that Greenaway made during the 1980s, the others being "The Belly of an Architect", "A Zed and Two Noughts" and "Drowning by Numbers". While "Cook/Thief" stole all the headlines with its snazzy visuals and outrageous grotesquery - not to mention various collisions with the censors - For me, "Drowning" is the best of the bunch. And somewhat easier on the eye (and stomach).

Revenge has never been served so deliciously and artistically. The visuals, the costumes, the set decoration, the changing colors cinematography and the soundtrack in this darker than dark comedy are stunning - the grandmasters were working on the movie. Among them Peter Greenaway, first and foremost a painter and a fine one, his brilliant cinematographer Sasha Verny, his astounding composer Michael Nyman who used for the movie the incredible "Memorial", and Jean-Paul Gaultier who designed the costumes. It also helped that Helen Mirren (as the long suffering wife, Georgina who in the end will serve her husband very well cooked revenge) and Michael Gambon (Albert- the thief, the gangster, the embodiment of pure evil and the owner of the swank restaurant) were two stars. Alan Howard plays a regular guest to whom Georgina is attracted to and carries on an affair with in the restaurant's restrooms and later in the back rooms, with the help of the Artist-cook (Richard Bohringer). Every frame of each Greenaway's movie looks and feels like an exquisite painting. "A Zed and two Naughts" is Greenaway's homage and admiration for Vermeer. "The Draughtsman's Contract" quite openly refers to Caravaggio, Georges de la Tour and other French and Italian artists. "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover", a fully realized vision of the director, a professional painter Peter Greenaway, is his tribute to the great Flemish and Dutch painters, Frans Hals, in particular. His large group portrait is constantly seen in the background of the hall in the London restaurant Le Hollandais that means "The Dutchman". I see Peter Greenaway as Hieronymus Bosch of the cinema, the creator of enormously beautiful, divine canvas depicting all horrors of hell that only humans can inflict on one another.

One of the most pretentious pieces of crap impersonating art I've ever had the misfortune to view. I sat through the entire flick in the belief that *some* redeeming quality would evidence itself before the end. With the exception of the cinematography (which was stellar), this assumption of mine was sorely mistaken. The pseudo-action and situations were stilted and contrived, the players' deliveries were wooden, and the symbolism was sophomorically transparent. I could only recommend this film as a "how NOT to" guide" for future film aspirants.

This film was released in 1990 in the U.S. and caused a bit of controversy. The MPAA gave it an X rating and the studio releasing it (Miramax) protested. They wanted an R and went so far as to take them to court. They lost the case but it persuaded the MPAA to issue the NC-17 rating for films too strong for an R. Such a big deal for such a dreadful little film. Director Peter Greenaway sets out to shock and disgust his audience. He succeeds. The plot is pointless--Greenaway could care less about that. He just wants to disgust people. The opening scene has a man stripped, smeared all over with dog feces and even having it shoved down his throat! Incidentally, it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. The settings are incredibly beautiful, there is an array of very talented British actors (Helen Mirren--Why? But she did do "Caligula" in 1980 so...) and the cinematography is stunning. But Greenaway is constantly bombarding the audience with grotesque, vile characters (the thief) sickening imagery (some very likable characters are tortured, maimed or killed), characters being degraded in sickening ways, and tops it all off with cannabilism. If anyone protests this, Greenaway could always say--"Look at the setting, the cinematography, the actors--this is ART!" No, it isn't. It's just assault--pure and simple. Sadly, Greenaway thinks otherwise. As one critic said at the time of this film's release--"Greenaway's like a big bully--he throws you down on the ground and kicks art in your face". Exactly. A sick, vile piece of exploitation. I KNOW I'm going to hear from Greenaway's fans but I'm standing by my opinion.

I saw it when it first came out, I suppose, in 89 or 90. It gave me an upset stomach and a headache for about 2 weeks afterwards. And even now, 10 years later, just thinking about it really makes my stomach upset. This is without a doubt the grossest film I've ever seen. Juvenile sadism masquerades as "art." It's very difficult to me to attach myself to a film which features nothing but repugnant characters; to do so, the characters have to be really, really interesting. These aren't. They are brutish and nasty to the very end, yet terribly 2-dimensional. You don't care what happens to them after a while. But the shear grossness of the film compels you to watch, the same way one is drawn to watch an accident. I actually almost walked out of this film, but stayed for some unknown reason. Not the wisest decision I've ever made. I'd give it a "zero" if it were possible, but the "1" will have to do. I better stop now. My headache is returning.

A play. A director. A crazy writer. Some more crazy actors. A perfect score. Mix them together, add a doze of Antonioni and Fellini, and you'll get this movie. This is not your usual film, and for the majority of people this would be `THE' craziest movie ever! But, for sake of art and originality, please see this movie with an open mind and take it as is: an expression of originality and creativity. The costumes, the scenes, and the cinematography are like from a play in the decadent times. Very intriguing transitions from one scene to another, changing the light/costumes/music all at the same time, but following the same scenario idea, makes you wonder if the director/writer were `awake' when they created this. or a better way of saying something about this movies: `it's a Greenaway'. You see a Dali painting and you know is by Dali, the same with this film: something that you'll always associate with Greenaway and his original way of seeing the world. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

It's too long since I've seen this to do a proper hatchet job, but I recall thinking that it was needlessly difficult to watch. Art films don't have to be jarringly stilted, but this one groans under the weight of Peter Greenaway's constant reminders that he is AVANT GARDE. It's the film equivalent of a dinner party guest who spends the evening spitting in your food to show that he is free from the constraints of social norms. There are elements - the class observations, long panning shots and colour changes from room to room, to name three - that show Greenaway's unusual talent, but they are overwhelmed by a tide of gratuitous overacting, overlong scenes and functionless dialogue. The film is an extended metaphor for Margaret Thatcher's thuggish reign as Prime Minister of Britain, and the subject seems to have thrown Greenaway into such a frothing rage that he was unable to concentate on anything but the metaphysical. Some people believe that the film succeeds because of its anarchic, freewheeling nature, but I think that is precisely its failure. Greenaway's reluctance to rein in the more self-indulgent parts of the film smacks of laziness and an inability to distinguish the benefits of experimentation from the dross it inevitably throws up. It is as if he is saying: "Who am I to intervene in art?" Well, Peter, you are the director. You are perfectly placed to do so, and we really wouldn't hold it against you.

What a noxious little dish this is, served up with all the trimmings of Greenaway's apparently constant dislike of women, (first detected in THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT but overlooked by the politically correct as it posed as an `art' film), his `operatic' sense of self-importance, ideas lifted from other movies, (the changing dress colour previously happened in ORPHÉE in the late 40s!), and the somewhat infantile notion that `daring' and `shock' are somehow synonymous with `genius' or `profundity'. A squalid, sordid little opus that really tells us little more than the fact that some people find cruelty entertaining, and middle-class `intellectuals' still get a charge out of slumming. Monotonous, dreary, shallow and pretentious.