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

Product Information

Immediately upon seeing the opulently prepared food, knowing it would be rendered into refuse as the story progressed, I was reminded of a long-time favorite of mine, the Peter Greenaway film, “ The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover ” (1989). As a person with a deeply ingrained appreciation for the pleasures of food, not only for nourishment and enjoyment of it, but as a rich and sumptuous visual metaphor, this movie fed my art-house cravings.

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. Shot entirely on Elstree’s stage six, the story unfolds during line evenings at an exclusive French restaurant where the Thief hangs out with his scummy gang of cut-throats, regaling them with his obscene vanities and diabolic table manners, and casually brutalising his long-suffering Wife (Mirren). It’s not surprising that Georgina takes a lover, a bookish sort named Michael (Alan Howard) who often dines alone at the restaurant. Before long, Georgina and Michael are sneaking off to toilets and pantries for sex while Albert gorges on food. The restaurant’s cook (Richard Bohringer) helps the lovers. Later, when Albert learns of their deception, he exacts a hideous revenge. And then Georgina goes him one better with a unique last supper. I’ll spare you the details, but those with sensitive stomachs may bolt for the exits. 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.His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).

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. 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.

Edition:

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. 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. Richard Boarst (played by Richard Bohringer) is the chef of Le Hollandais, a lavishly large and atmospheric restaurant where he must abide by the new owner's strict demands in preparation and presentation. Albert Spica (played by Michael Gambon) is the mobster who owns Le Hollandais. A sadistic and greasy figure who is bossy and cruel not just to the chef, but also to his underlings as well as his wife. His wife Georgina (played by Helen Mirren) is in an abusive relationship with her husband who constantly harasses her sexually, mentally, and physically in front of everyone though she is no strong enough to break away from him. Then there is Michael (played by Alan Howard), a bookshop owner who dines nightly at Le Hollandais while reading. It is at the restaurant that he and Georgina start a sexual relationship, but what will become of them once the sadistic husband finds out about their new relationship? It comes as no surprise to learn that it took director Peter Greenaway a very long time to find a film company that would consider his script for more than 30 seconds, since the film opens with a close-up of dogs gorging on hunks of bloody carcass and then pans to the Thief (Gambon) force-feeding dogshit to a naked man. The cold artiness of Greenaway’s previous films (The Draughtsman’s Contract, The Belly Of An Architect) is thoroughly subordinated here. Greenaway’s formalism is manifested from the opening shot of the film— The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover doesn’t break the fourth wall, because no such barrier exists here in the first place. The sets are overtly theatrical, with carefully color-coded production design and costuming (the latter by none other than Jean-Paul Gaultier). Sascha Vierny’s extraordinary cinematography and Michael Nyman’s minimalistic score both help to tie everything together. Greenway fills the frame with a myriad of references, allusions, and even the occasional visual or verbal pun. He cheekily allows Flemish painter Hans Ral’s The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616 to dominate the central dining room of the restaurant, without explaining that Ral painted the members of the same company in 1627 and 1639 while wearing different colored sashes—an obscure reference which explains what happens to the sashes worn by Spica’s gang as they move from room to room. Even Albert’s name uses wordplay to conceal an ironic reference: “Spica” is an anagram of “aspic,” and aside from the gastronomic reference, there’s also no dandy in this particular aspic. For a film that throws such an abundance of blood, bodily fluids, and rotting flesh at the screen, nothing can be taken at face value.

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? 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.

Rate And Review

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. Richard Bohringer as Richard Boarst, "The Cook": The head chef of "Le Hollandais". He resents Albert Spica, who has taken control of the restaurant.