The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

A movie I have been meaning to see for twenty years, but never got ‘round to, because I always forgot and didn’t really know what it was about ... is Peter Greenaway’s 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (resp. played by Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Alan Howard). Visually, the movie is a lavish and grand spectacle: the cinematography, the sets, the décor, the food displays, and the costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. (Every set has its own color, and costumes change in color along with the sets: blue outside, green in the kitchen, red in the restaurant, white in the restroom, brown in the bookshop.) I cannot say I’m a big fan of the score composed by Michael Nyman... It’s all very theatrical and formalist, but tedious as a result. Most annoying is the titular thief who has a violent oral fixation of Freudian proportions and who just keeps jabbering on and on about how brilliant he is, and how stupid everybody else is. It’s already terribly annoying after five minutes, but alas we have to endure his boorish bawls throughout ... practically on end... You can essentially guess the plot just from the title: the wife of a thief is having an affair in the cook’s restaurant, and then the thief finds out... Food, sex, and violence; life, love, and death... Hmmm... what was all the fuss about? Pray tell.