Wednesday | November 9, 2005 7:00 pm

The Belly of an Architect

Screening on Film

Directed by Peter Greenaway.
With Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, Lambert Wilson.
UK, 1987, 35mm, color, 118 min.

This visually stunning work chronicles the self-destructive decline of an American architect, in Rome to mount an exhibition on the eighteenth century architect Etienne-Louis Boulèe. An obsession with his stomach causes him to lose his wife, his creativity, and perhaps even his sanity. Extravagant in detail and color, the film—in true Greenaway form—is packed with art and architectural references, obsessions and omens, and exquisite traces of life and death.