The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a London gangster, Albert Spica, arriving at his posh restaurant, La Hollandais, with his entourage of thugs and a man who owes him money. While his thugs hold the man down, Albert smears dog excrement on the him and forces some into his mouth. He leaves the man behind and enters the restaurant's kitchen, where he berates and bullies some of the staff, much to the annoyance of the restaurant's manager and head chef, Richard. Albert has also brought his long-suffering wife, Georgina, with him, whom he also subjects to continual verbal abuse. Meanwhile, Albert's victim is brought into the restaurant and tended to by some of the staff.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.One night, Albert becomes furious when Georgina doesn't return to dinner - she and Michael are having sex in a back room of the kitchen while Richard hides their tryst from Albert. Albert rushes into the kitchen looking for her and Richard hides them in the freezer. He returns for them a few minutes later, after Albert has left the kitchen and offers them a way to sneak out of the restaurant together; they're both hidden in the back of a truck full of rotting meat and driven to Michael's home. Once there, they are cleaned off by one of the restaurant staff and remain, hiding from Albert. However, back at the restaurant, Albert is correctly suspicious that Georgina is having an affair and, after ransacking the kitchen, vows to find the mystery lover and eat him.One of Albert's henchmen, Cory, catches sight of a young boy, Pup, leaving the restaurant with a basket full of food (it is for the hiding lovers). Cory reports to Albert, who orders his men to capture Pup. He tortures the young boy, hospitalizing him. Georgina rushes to the hospital to visit Pup, which was a ruse to lure her away from Michael. Albert finds Michael at home and kills him by having pages of his books stuffed down his throat.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.Albert is invited to the restaurant, which announces a private party for him. When he arrives, Georgina greets him and a procession enters from the kitchen made up of everyone whom Albert has offended. The procession is carrying a long, covered tray, which is placed in front of Albert. Georgina removes the cover and Albert is horrified to see the roasted body of Michael on the tray. Albert's assistant, Mitchel, grabs a knife but is easily subdued by a few of the guests. Albert attempts to draw his pistol but is easily disarmed. The gun is passed around to a few of the guests and is finally given to Georgina, who points it at Albert and orders him to eat from Michael's body. Very reluctantly and thoroughly sickened, Albert takes a forkful of flesh and eats. After a few moments, Georgina shoots and kills Albert who falls backwards. Her last word is "Cannibal."

Tags: comedy, avant garde, neo noir, murder, dark, allegory, cult, alternate reality, violence, absurd, psychedelic, satire, revenge, sadist, sci-fi

Review:
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..
Beatrice, Dante's perfect woman, Georgina Spica (Helen Mirren) who is married to the devil.In the beginning, the cook (God) in the real world is seen kicked and smeared and fed dog feces by Gabon.
A couple of times Gabon even finds his way into the sanctity of heaven, but this is only short-lived.The mood of the film is dark-black, heralded by brilliant reds or greens, and the tenor of an angelic child throughout.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
However Georgina plots revenge against Albert with the support of Richard and the victims of Albert."The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover" is one of the most grotesque, eschatological, bizarre and weird films that I have ever seen.
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.
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).
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 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.
It's interesting to note that if a dozen monkeys typed randomly on a dozen typewriters for a few weeks, you could put it all together as a screenplay that reviewers would give four stars to - and then each of those reviewers would say it means something entirely different.This movie is the peak of the "urine in a glass is art" movement.All you have to do as a filmmaker is to hire good actors, an excellent costume designer, an innovative cinematographer (even if he only has one innovative idea), and a musical score composer who is instantly identifiable because any 10 seconds of his score is identical to any other 10 seconds, and then people will think - "there must be some profound idea here".
It just has to look "artsy".Well, I'm sorry, but as someone who has seen a majority of the more well known "art films" (and some of which are excellent), I haven't the slightest doubt that there is nothing going on here, except an adolescent being allowed to make films.The small skeleton of a plot is stolen from "Born Yesterday (1950)", except that here the gangster's wife is not uplifted by her association with her lover - in fact, there is no evidence that any of the characters, or the filmmaker himself for that matter, has a clue what "uplifted" means.For a more substantive review that I agree entirely with, see below the review that starts:" Jim Nygaard  Saint Paul, MN  Date: 6 September 2000  Summary: Simply vile".
'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover' is a film about politics, cannibalism, vomit, love, death, betrayal, and torture.
We really get a sense that the world that is depicted in this film was once truly beautiful and open to possibility, and the fact that it is a world that is long gone makes the film far more tragic than we would usually expect, especially one with such grand texture and such a dark sense of humor.This is the kind of film that reminds me that people in the film industry can still make intelligent, smart, and brilliant films without having to pile on the excess.
While the film is certainly not for everyone, especially children(although it won't be easy for them to view it given it's NC-17 rating), this film is for the kind of adult audience who likes to think and not just be shown something that will waste their time.
For people who want to be challenged and shown a film that will make them think about the world in a different way than they normally do, It's a must see.
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'.
If you couldn't, well, you probably didn't belong in the theaters during this daring new wave of creativity."The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" was controversial at the time because the MPAA would not give it an "R", forcing it to be released with no rating, with the result that many theaters would not show it (it was actually this film that inspired the creation of the NC-17 rating).
I hesitate to say this about a film that is clearly ambitious and crafted with such knowing technique, but this may very well be the very worst movie I've ever seen.Bottom line:  I just didn't see the point of it.
From the first scene of excrement smearing, to the last scene of cannibalism, the movie appalls and makes you want to go rent 'You and me and Everyone we know' - it's that bad a film.The title is the plot, and the revolting mechanics are mostly brought about by Michael Gambon  an actor I like.
I mean it's sadistic, sick, spooky, and yet it's a real art piece.The story really touched me, yes, it actually did, and I really liked the way they shot the movie.
Such a big deal for such a dreadful little film.Director Peter Greenaway sets out to shock and disgust his audience.
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".
After not having seen this movie for a year or so i woke up one day hearing the little boy sing, seeing different rooms in different colors and smelling the rotten meat.
I have a problem with art-house films like THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER and it's that the directors of such fare are often totally ignorant when it comes to decent film-making.
Sure, they obsess over designer costumes and make-up, and they focus intently on the colour palette of their movies, but when it comes to movie-making staples like pace, character, dialogue, and intrigue, they fail.Peter Greenaway is such a director.
The running time is as slow as a snail, and much of it is made up of scenes of the repulsive Michael Gambon character berating his wife and associates.Greenaway's a better director than he is a writer, because the script is terrible.
The whole film takes place on a cheap-looking set that quickly becomes boring, Helen Mirren spends most of the running time naked and forgets how to act, and luminaries such as Tim Roth and Ciaran Hinds are wasted.Yes, there are a few shocking scenes, yet cannibalism is dealt with in a much more entertaining fashion in both B-movie fare (such as Pete Walker's 1974 FRIGHTMARE) and Hollywood flicks (like RAVENOUS).
Didn't Like It. I must confess that the only reason I watched this film was because it starred Helen Mirren who I knew took her clothes of in it.
Tim Roth is and has been one of my favorite actors for years, and the main reason why I saw this movie, but the only thing I remember of his performance is watching him throw up.
I couldn't and haven't seen this film since the first time I watched it in 1991 simply because of its brutality.
The story is pretty insubstantial, the characters weakly 'developed' by voice-over and mime alone, and contrary to the pseudo-intellectual 'critics' who gush over the cinematography, there's nothing here that any student MtV director couldn't accomplish.Like too much of Peter Greenaway's work, this is pretty much an excuse for the notorious auteur to indulge his personal perversions.
What a pretentious pottyful of of art film crap.What a brilliant postmodern commentary.That's the tired, been-done-before "genius" of 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover': Greenaway is toying with us: can you say "Dada"?Mercifully, the performers aren't toying: the acting is superb, especially from Helen Mirren - from whom la grande overblown dame Streep could take immensely profitable lessons; and from Michael Gambon whose vulgar, sound-bitten, enfant terriblesque soliloquies are quite piquant.
At least I sense that Greenaway wants us to think him clever.The only grating element of this film is its score which, for the most part was rather nicely suited to the film's visual texture, but which at other times managed to hammer my finer sensibilities like the four-thousand three hundred and sixty-third drop of Chinese water torture.Countless reviewers have dissected this film with a relish not exhibited, at its denouement, by its character Albert Spica.
The way the music shifts, in mood and temperament, with the scene and the backdrop and clothes is unique and memorable.Helen Mirren is a star here, but for me it's Spica, a great and lasting performance by Michael Gambon that stands out.Its enormous, cavernous looks, its story, its flamboyance, its cruelty.
The wife (Helen Mirren) of an oafish restaurant owner (Michael Gambon) becomes bored with her husband and considers an affair with a regular patron (Alan Howard).First thing worth noting is the color scheme, with its bright red, blue, green and white.
This film is Peter Greenaway at his best, and the first place I ever had the pleasure of watching Helen Mirren's work which is, as always, outstanding.
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.
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.
I'd seen a few Peter Greenaway films prior to this, but none of them have particularly worked for me.
I liked Greenaway's other films, but I revolted against this one..
If you look at it from a cinematic point of view, it was a good movie: the camera, the colors, the costumes, the music and most of the acting was good.
I saw this film 10 years ago and it stands out as one of the absolute worst to date, and I've seen a lot of bad movies..
"The Cook, The Thief his Wife & her Lover", is probably Peter Greenaway's most well known film; mainly do to its controversy and NC-17 rating.
Any way Quentin Tarantino has probably seen this film and liked it, so all you people who keep using Quentin in your reviews maybe need to contact him and ask his opinion before putting words in the guys mouth.
Possibly Peter Greenaway's most accessible work, this is a highly engaging and  visually dense film.
Helen Mirren (the wife) couldn't act weakly if she tried, and every  word, every grimace or raised eyebrow is nuanced to perfection (indeed, only the likes of Judi Dench can better her), and Michael Gambon (the thief) makes  no attempt at subtlety as he unleashes a vicious reading of Albert Spica, a reptilian restaurant owner and general piece of pondlife.
If there is some other allegory contained here, I would like to know what it is - even the director/writer isn't telling.On the plus side: the plot was easy to follow, the acting superb, and the cinematography interesting to say the least, and I love everything Helen Mirren is in.
A loud, garrulous, chauvinistic, vulgar thief (played brilliantly by Michael Gambon), and his reserved, miserable wife (Helen Mirren - another great actress), who frequent the same restaurant.
Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover comes into a different category.
Since they are brilliantly filmed with very believable characters and top rate acting many people take them at face value, ignoring any allegories and categorising them as disgusting pornographic works.
The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover are played by Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Alan Howard.
How terribly clever!!For art house/foreign film buffs and people who like to get meaning out of a movie, this is a good one to watch.
The way it is filmed makes it look like the set is a huge stage which then makes the movie seem like a play.
There's a lot to admire in Peter Greenaway's 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, on an aesthetical level as well as on a visceral level; so mush so that the really nasty, ugly, distasteful and full on content comes across as quite beautiful in its sordid inclusion whilst the fancy sets and stunning cinematography deliberately sits uneasily and in stark juxtaposition with most of what's going on and who's instigating it.
Michael Gambons' brutally violent Albert Spica curses, insults, spits like no movie personality has ever done before.