The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover [DVD] [1989]

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Stunningly photographed by Sacha Vierny, this unnerving film takes place mostly in a cavernous French restaurant called Le Hollandais. The main room is dominated by a 1616 painting by the Dutch artist Frans Hals, A Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Civic Guard Company. The dignity of the officers as they sup is a stark contrast to the crudity of the hoods who chow down before it. Conception is one thing, execution another, and Greenaway’s collaborators on Cook, Thief give it a crystalline sharpness that sets it apart from his other narrative films, even those that are more ambitious and visually dense. His cinematographer, Sacha Vierny, once a lenser for Greenaway’s cinematic hero Alain Resnais on films like Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year At Marienbad, covers the soundstage in impeccable dolly shots and painterly lighting schemes. His composer, Michael Nyman, brings a baroque grandeur to a score that pulses with the hypnotic repetition of Philip Glass at his best. And the costumes, by Jean-Paul Gaultier, are suitably avant-garde and suggestive of wealth and power, particularly Mirren’s final gown, so imperious that it takes two servants to manage the train. Jean-Paul Gaultier designed the costumes. Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli prepared the food, used as props. Gold, Richard (21 March 1990). "For Peter Greenaway, gaining distribution in U.S. for 'Cook, Thief' a battle". Variety. p.7. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a 1989 crime drama art film written and directed by Peter Greenaway, starring Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Alan Howard in the title roles. An international co-production of the United Kingdom and France, the film's graphic violence and nude scenes, as well as its lavish cinematography and formalism, were noted at the time of its release.

The cruel and sadistic crime boss Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) has dinner every night in his restaurant with his wife Georgina Spica (Helen Mirren) and his gang. Albert abuses of his wife, his gangsters, the chef Richard Borst (Richard Bohringer) and the restaurant employees. Albert comes to the restaurant each night and holds court with his entourage and Georgina, while criticizing Richard's menu choices. Georgina notices a quiet regular customer, Michael, who is always reading. The two begin a clandestine affair with most encounters occurring in the restaurant itself. Georgina believes that if she engages in her affair in Albert's place of business, it will be easier to keep hidden from her husband. Richard Bohringer as Richard Boarst, "The Cook": The head chef of "Le Hollandais". He resents Albert Spica, who has taken control of the restaurant.Georgina discovers that Albert has murdered Michael. She goes to Richard and asks him to cook Michael and serve his body to Albert. Richard is initially reluctant but Georgina is able to convince him, considering Albert's deplorable treatment of everyone around him, including herself and Richard. Recently, I posted my thoughts on the movie “ The Platform ”, a movie which I watched as my thoughts turned to the rich experience of food at Thanksgiving. The movie is visually beautiful, managing to be both Brutalist in its sets, while a meticulously set table of a sumptuous feast is shown descending, to be ravaged and destroyed, color filtered through a washed out palette that renders its splendor null and void, draining it’s vitality as it heads into decay. The Platform is also a horror, and horror requires something that perhaps brings up the bile in our throats, and what better statement to make about food as a symbol of Power, the inequities of this world, vice, transformation and survival than cannibalism? Peter Greenaway has said that the Jacobean play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore provided him with the main template for his screenplay. [4] Music [ edit ]

Greenaway has a love of criticisms of culture and societal structure. Spica is a cruel and distasteful vulgarian, created to be despised and destroyed. Georgina simply is a person who may have found the joys in pleasures of daily living – food in particular is a sustaining pleasure to her, and sex gives her some escape from the trauma of her marriage, yet it is fitting that she transforms into a being who brings forth justice in her revenge – we are grateful for her snapping point after witnessing such suffering. We recognize the rich table set before such metaphorical swine as Spica and his thrall as symbolic of those in power who revel in the spoils they steal from the commoner, while enjoying the debasement of those that they exploit and violate, laughing all the while. There is gratification in watching the corrupt be called to justice, and in watching their destruction. Truthfully, a part of each of us would likely gladly extract our pound of flesh from these monstrosities, given a chance, and reclaim some of what we have had stolen from us, while returning the gift of suffering such men in power dispense to all below their station, to remind us who is in charge. Helen Mirren as Georgina Spica, "The Wife": The sophisticated and battered wife of Albert Spica, from whom she has unsuccessfully tried to escape. Overcome with rage and grief, she begs Boarst to cook Michael's body, and he eventually complies. Together with all the people that Spica wronged throughout the film, Georgina confronts her husband finally at the restaurant and forces him at gunpoint to eat a mouthful of Michael's cooked body. Spica obeys, gagging. Georgina then shoots him in the head, calling him a cannibal. Artist and filmmaker Peter Greenaway had made five feature length films and numerous shorts before "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" in 1989. Experimental in nature and far from being commercial or structurally traditional, Greenaway followed in the footsteps of abstract artists that challenged their artforms by introducing ideas what were not frequently explored. He had stated that most cinema has been a retelling of novels but in a visual medium, and that there was little to be excited about by its straightforward and linear structural state. His early features "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982), "A Zed & Two Noughts" (1985), "The Belly of an Architect" (1987), and "Drowning by Numbers" (1988) were critical hits, with the last two nominated for the Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival and Greenaway winning the Best Artistic Contribution prize for "Drowning in Numbers" there. But this was only the beginning. "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" was bigger, bolder, more extravagant, more daring, and eventually more controversial than anything he had done on film up to that point.Ciarán Hinds as Cory, a pony-tailed pimp who is ejected from Spica's gang after he protests against Spica's brutal treatment of his girls. English gangster Albert Spica has taken over the high-class Le Hollandais restaurant, which is managed by French chef Richard Boarst. Spica makes nightly appearances at the restaurant with his retinue of thugs. His oafish behavior causes frequent confrontations with the staff and his own customers, whose patronage he loses but whose money he seems not to miss. The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover" is one of the most grotesque, eschatological, bizarre and weird films that I have ever seen. But it is also absolutely original and mesmerizing, with intense use of colors, and with the contrast of vulgarity and art. Food, eschatology, sex, cruelty, torture, cannibalism and revenge are entwined along 124 minutes running time. The result is not pleasant and only specific audiences will appreciate this film. Last time I had seen this film was on 08 September 2000 on VHS. My vote is eight. The documentary was previously available part of the Umbrella Entertainment 3-disc DVD Peter Greenway Collection which included "The Draughtman's Contract", "A Zed & Two Noughts" and the third disc containing the documentary. This lengthy vintage documentary has Greenaway in Munich, Dusseldorf, and Amsterdam discussing about art, filmmaking, his career, his style and more, which is also interspersed with clips from his early works. In addition there is a lengthy segment on an art installation he produced featuring various nude models, plus a lengthy behind the scenes look at the making of "Prospero's Books", released the previous year.

Albert Spica ( Michael Gambon ) is an imposing criminal boss, who has decided he will shine his patronage upon his favorite restaurant, Le Hollandais. We are introduced in a scene in which we see a man debased and beaten, ending in scatalogical humiliation. Spica has elbowed his way to part “ownership”, prepared from the start of the film to bully his way to the forefront, each night bringing in his crew of henchmen and his long-suffering and traumatized wife Georgina ( Helen Mirren ) into the restaurant where he can openly display his brash and uncultured tastes at the dinner table as lavish feasts are presented for his consumption by the Cook, Richard Boarst ( Richard Bohringer ). Georgina herself seems to bear herself with elegance and a nuanced taste that goes undeserved by her husband, who constantly abuses and terrorizes her. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover isn’t for all tastes, in both the literal and metaphorical senses of the term, as it’s filled with imagery both beautiful and unpleasant. Greenaway has a unique gift for making food appear both attractive and disgusting at the same time, and the film freely associates sex, death, and bodily functions—as Albert notes in his typically coarse fashion: “The pleasures are related because the naughty bits and the dirty bits are so close together that it just goes to show how eating and sex are related.” But for adventurous viewers, it’s an open text with limitless depths to explore. The film's original running time was 124 minutes. Due to the content, the MPAA gave Miramax a choice of either an X rating or go unrated (adults only) for theatrical release. Unrated was chosen in light of the X rating being more associated with pornographic films. Two versions of the film were released on VHS in the 1990s. One was an R-rated cut running 95 minutes (mainly for large video store chains); the other was the original version. Groves, Don (13 December 1989). " 'Future II' hot, 'Oliver & Co.' surges in Europe". Variety. p.40.And as mentioned before, it's that odd, twisted humanity that makes Albert Spica feel, in a way, genuine. Without that wrinkle to the character, there is a chance that the film's principal antagonist would feel silly, and perhaps less like a genuine threat. It's his credible evilness and capacity to continue doing harm that makes him so easy to root against, allowing the eventual revenge of his wife (the details of which are probably too disturbing to detail here... but also, it would be doing the film a disservice to discuss) to feel all the more satisfying. And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's Michael Gambon who was essential in making this character work. Albert Spica would've been an immensely difficult character to play, and getting into the headspace of such a man (even a fictional man) would've likely been upsetting. It's a testament to Gambon's acting skills that he pulled it all off, and portrayed a film villain for the ages.