The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 1989 R18+
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 1989 R18+
35MM, COLOUR, DOLBY, 120 MINUTES, FRANCE / UK, ENGLISH / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: PETER GREENAWAY / CINEMATOGRAPHER: SACHA VIERNY / EDITOR: JOHN WILSON / PRODUCTION DESIGNERS: BEN VAN OS, JAN ROELFS / MUSIC: MICHAEL NYMAN / COSTUME DESIGN: JEAN-PAUL GAULTIER / PRODUCTION CO: ALLARTS COOK, ELSEVIRA, ERATO FILMS, ERBOGRAPH CO, FILMS INC, VENDEX / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: UNIVERSAL FILMS
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is a cruel, dark and opulent study of lust, greed and vengeance. Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) is a vulgar thief who presides over an elegant London restaurant with his entourage of cronies and his beaten and degraded wife Georgina (Helen Mirren). Each night the head chef prepares a lavish menu to be consumed by the barbaric and gluttonous mobster. When Georgina makes eye contact with the gentle Michael (Alan Howard) at an adjacent table, it’s not long before both begin meeting secretly in the bathroom and kitchen. When Albert discovers his wife’s infidelity he carries out a violent retribution on her lover that triggers a more savage retaliation from Georgina and the restaurant’s staff. Part black comedy, Jacobean tragedy and political satire, Peter Greenaway’s restaurant can be read as microcosm for the excesses of modern society — what Oscar Wilde characterised as “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” —and draws upon Antonin Artaud’s concept of the theatre of cruelty to echo the angry reality of living in Britain in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.
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