The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1990)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty Good

I'll tell you why so serious

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This would have to be one of the weirdest, creative and most original movies I've ever seen. The way it is filmed makes it look like the set is a huge stage which then makes the movie seem like a play. The camera seems to just drift around the restaurant rooms effortlessly and you only see each room from certain angles. You have to be observant to see the subtle changes that happen as the characters move from room to room, most seem to miss this.This is black comedy at its best in the hands of a master. Peter Greenaway does this one proud, probably my favourite movie he has directed. The whole movie feels very existential and you will question many of the things going on and ponder what they really mean. How Peter Greenaways can come up with such an original and clever story is baffling. I can only think that he would be the only one who could execute it so well. Everything is done brilliantly, food, clothes, sets, music, lighting and cast.

Wow. I had never heard of Mr. Greenaway before coming across this film so i didn't know what to expect. It definitely was not this. Even after seeing Salo, or The 120 day of Sodom, I never would have imagined such a sinister and forbiddingly vehement film can be so strikingly alluring in a figurative and theatrical sense. The set design, colour aspects and cinematography where like thrusting into a Kubrick-ian alternate universe. Michael Gambon's portrayal of the heinous Albert was so trembling to watch but his every action was such a captivating experience. I also loved the subtle but ever so intriguing, young Tim Roth as Mitchel. He was dubiously sound, revolting in a reluctant scheme to over shadow Gambon's character theatrically. Michael Nyman's score was like the desert we didn't deserve; the ever so needed dash of spices that adds that perfect touch from begging to end. It saddens me that a film like this will never rise to prominence because there are very few individuals who are on the same wavelength as Peter Greenaway. Hollywood, or this planet rather, is deprived of more minds like Greenaway. I now look forward to divulging into his universe of films.

When a friend brought the DVD of "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" for me to borrow, he gleefully told me, *you'll see a Dame fully naked." I immediately asked, "Oh yes, would that be Helen Mirren?" to which he told me it was and asked how I had guessed. I said that Helen was famous for doing a revealing movie although I had never seen it and, I must admit, when I began to watch it, I was probably more titillated by the idea of seeing someone famous who I had long been a fan of naked than seeing a movie!However, as the film got under way, it became very apparent that this was no "ordinary" movie (whatever that is). At first, I found myself wondering what on Earth was going on but, as it progressed, I more and more began to feel as though I was at a live performance of a Shakespearian tragedy melodrama. Everything was dramatically overdone and I realised that this was completely intentional. If the naked love-making scenes had been faded out or masked, their impact would have been lost and the same applied to the gory scenes of abject cruelty.I did find myself wondering why Spica's (Gambon) restaurant had any clients at all given the way they were treated by him and his puppet henchmen and women and a number of other anomalies were also puzzling.However, after watching the movie, I thought I'd have a look at what other viewers had to say about it and logged onto IMDb. Amongst the few reviews I read, was one by Minerva Breanne Meybridge which, for me, brilliantly put the whole thing into perspective. Whether Minerva's interpretation is what the producers were aiming for is, of course, open to speculation but, as far as I'm concerned, excellently explains what is, after all, a decidedly bizarre movie.In fact, I would go so far as to say that Minerva's review should almost be mandatory reading before watching the movie.

Gorgeous, insane and utterly brilliant. I'd seen a few Peter Greenaway films prior to this, but none of them have particularly worked for me. This one just blew me away. Michael Gambon plays a crook who has bought a share of a fancy French restaurant. This means he can spend every night sitting in the middle of the restaurant loudly barking his particular brand of rudeness at his minions (including Tim Roth and Ciaran Hinds) and his put-upon wife (Helen Mirren). Mirren is so sick of her life she wanders off to the bathroom to have anonymous sex with a book-reading customer (Alan Howard). After a few nights of this, Gambon catches on and, well, the results aren't that pretty. Two things in particular stand out in this one: first, Gambon. Holy crap, he is one of the most brazen bastards ever to be seen (and especially heard) in the cinema. The performance is utterly brilliant. I hate this guy, don't get me wrong, but I could listen to him yell for hours and I wouldn't stop laughing. Second: the production design. It's one of the neatest looking films I've ever seen. Shot on an elaborate sound stage, the restaurant (and its exterior) are color coded. It's brilliant. My favorite bit of it are the urinals in the men's room: a shoulder-high pillar in the very center of the bathroom with the urinals on each side, so the urinators have to stare right into their neighbors eyes as they pee. The story has an allegorical meaning, apparently about Thatcher, but at this point that's only a historical footnote. The film holds up great with all its nuttiness. My only minor complaint: the last sequence is a tad too straightforward. But, really, I absolutely loved this. It's one of the best films I've seen in a while.