Arguably Greenaway’s most controversial work about food and sex, this cult arthouse sensation pushed cinematography and visual style to a whole new ascetic level, as the wife of an ultra-obnoxious restaurateur cheats on him.
Review #3,020
Dir. Peter Greenaway
1989 | UK | Drama, Crime, Romance | 124min | 2.35:1 | English, French & Dutch
R21 (passed clean) for sexual scenes, explicit nudity, coarse language and disturbing scenes
Cast: Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard, Tim Roth
Plot: At an opulent gourmet restaurant run by her obnoxious husband, a woman carries on an affair with a diner with deadly consequences.
Awards: Official Selection (Venice)
Distributor: Universal
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Dark/Mature – Extramarital Affair; Food & Sex; Power, Pleasure & Sadism
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Cult Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Thankfully, I was eating a vegetarian dinner when I was viewing this film with a long-ass name. Otherwise, I might have puked. That’s the reality of things if you do decide to tackle arguably Peter Greenaway’s most controversial work.
It is, however, also the same film that made him a filmmaker extraordinaire, one whose body of work would challenge social norms, defy the conventions of film form and style, and in the case of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, become a cult arthouse sensation.
With his unorthodox methods already visibly present in his early features such as The Falls (1980) and A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), Greenaway (together with DP Sacha Vierny), pushed cinematography and visual style to a whole new ascetic level with The Cook, as they imagine the film like walking through a museum gallery that features one painting after another on a single wall.
As such, the camera tracks only from left to right, or vice versa. There are hardly any shot-reverse shots or changes in shot sizes or angles. Well, that’s lateral thinking for you.
“He’ll never believe I do it right under his nose, between courses, between the hors-d’œuvre and the canard à l’orange, between the dessert and the coffee.”
With some of the most ravishing reds you will see that put even Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern (1991) to shame, Greenaway’s film is utterly absorbing aesthetically.
The cast is also remarkably compelling, with special mention to Michael Gambon, who, right off the bat, plays one of the most obnoxious and frightening men I’ve ever seen. His treatment of people, including his wife (Helen Mirren), reeks of extreme rudeness, self-centeredness and abuse of power.
So, when Mirren’s character finds erotic solace in a mild-mannered frequent diner in her husband’s haute cuisine restaurant, where the film is mostly set, the stakes are raised immeasurably.
Greenaway doesn’t shy away from all the explicit sex and nudity, which is just as well in this place where the boss avoids moral etiquette like the plague. Food and sex are two sides of the same pleasurable coin, with Greenaway pushing, shall we say, ‘flesh fetish’, to obscene levels in the infamous denouement.
Grade: A
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Eternality Tan 