THE THIEF THE COOK HIS WIFE & HER LOVER Movie Review

Every night, an expansive—and expanding—gangster (Michael Gambon) holds court in the posh London restaurant he owns. As he wolfs down plate after plate of food prepared by the expensive French chef (Richard Bohringer) whom he constantly belittles, he holds court to a slew of sycophants and low-lifes who guffaw at his crude humor and never dis his gluttony. Among those at the table is his elegant and attractive wife (Helen Mirren), whose response to the gazes of a distinguished-looking diner at a nearby table leads to an affair that kicks off with their flamboyant copulation in one of the ladies' room's stalls. Sex, food, and excrement find their common bond in gluttony in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, a visionary epic of theoretical eroticism that inspires as much critical admiration as it does contempt—which appears to be exactly what its creator intended. Though visually astonishing, the picture might be insufferable had Greenaway not cast Gambon and Mirren; Gambon is terrifying and exhausting as the maniacal mobster, and Mirren is the very model of a woman whose repression of both hatred and desire finally force the two emotions to become indistinguishable. At the end of Greenaway's earlier The Draughtsman's Contract, a statue that comes to life turns his head toward us and spits in our (the audience's) face. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is an infernal and occasionally inspired two-hour version of that gesture—carefully structured, of course, as political metaphor—yet you can't take your eyes off it (except for the occasional glance at one's watch). As this monstrous circus of gluttony enters its second hour, we fear that the only sin we haven't seen—literal cannibalism—has to show up here someplace, and in this Greenaway doesn't (or perhaps does) disappoint.

NEXT STOP … La Grande Bouffe, The Pillow Book, The Long Good Friday, 301, 302

1990 (R) 123m/C GB Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard, Tim Roth; D: Peter Greenaway; W: Peter Greenaway; C: Sacha Vierny; M: Michael Nyman. VHS, Letterbox, Closed Caption THV