Tuesday | March 5, 2002 7:00 pm

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

Screening on Film

Directed by Peter Greenaway.
With Michel Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard.
France/Netherlands/UK, 1989, 35mm, color, 120 min.

Greenaway’s grisly, color-coded fugue built on themes of gluttony, adultery, fashion, art, and retaliation makes this his most deliciously nefarious venture. The film’s blend of violence, eroticism, melancholia, and satire recalls a classic Jacobean revenge play, but the look is pure Rembrandt meets Gaultier. The film may be read as political commentary on Thatcher’s Britain, visual commentary on the intersection of artistic practices in painting, architecture, and design, or as social commentary on the very status of the human soul in barbarous times.