The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover | Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover | Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon | Great Film; has it aged well?

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The Cook, The Thie...

	The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon Starz / Anchor Bay, 2001 average customer review:based on 110 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Bizarre Trip in Erotica

When I perused the previous reviews of this movie it became apparent to me that people think the movie is very bizarre and love it or they think it's very bizarre and hate it. There doesn't seem to be much indifference when it comes to "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover".

"The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" was written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Most of the film is set in an splendid epicurean restaurant called "Le Hollandais" which is owned by the Thief, Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) the uncouth, vulgar restaurant's owner. Albert a brutal criminal holds court every evening at the restaurant, along with his attractive wife Georgina (Helen Mirren) and various obsequious subordinates where he foists his convoluted views and questionable wisdom upon his captive audience. Even though Albert is the restaurant's owner his presence is tolerated and endured by the staff, including the Cook/Chef Richard (French actor Richard Bohringer). In short, Albert is a man easy to hate and impossible to like.

One evening while Albert is giving one of his boring discourses, often berating his guests, the apparently subservient Georgiana observes a moderately good looking gentleman reading a book while dining. She finds this studious man interesting, the antithesis of her vulgar, mean, loutish husband. After catching his attention and visually flirting back and forth for a few minutes, they meet each other in the hall to the restrooms, eventually enjoying a sexual liaison in a stall in the Ladies Room.

And so Georgina takes Michael (Alan Howard) as her lover, in an extremely dangerous love affair, having sex in various places, with the help of the Cook, within the confines of the restaurant, under the nose of her husband. Her obnoxious husband, who's no fool, becomes suspicious and eventually finding he's been made a cuckold is furious, stating publicly and categorically that he will kill Michael and eat him.

I will leave the rest of the movie to your imagination.

CONCLUSION

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is a movie of dichotomies. On one hand we have elegance and beauty, on the other there is vulgarity and ugliness. There is tenderness offset by brutality, boorishness in the face of proper etiquette, affection and sadism and above all, we have eroticism. I suppose Greenaway may have been trying to recreate a microcosm of life itself for, upon reflection, that is how I view it.

This is not a movie for the timid. Though not pornographic, it is sexually exploitive and mentally engaging, capturing ones imagination though not to the point of stimulating ones libido. None under the age of seventeen should watch this movie since there is much nudity including full frontal, but the the love scenes are handled delicately and tastefully. There are other reasons for not allowing younger viewers as well, since there is violence and a rather bizarre unnatural ending.

I can understand how some might find this distasteful or even abhorrent but I, who sometimes gravitate to the unusual, found the movie appealing and intriguing. Furthermore it was not just the cast (excellent), the storyline (wild) and the acting (wonderful) that fascinated me. The colorful surreal set was lovely and the method of cinematography, where the colors of the characters clothing would change from entering the kitchen form the dining room and vice versa, was extremely interesting.

This is a movie that is memorable and worth seeing if you think you can handle it after my warning.

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Great Film; has it aged well?

Remember seeing this film when it first came out and loving every aspect about it - from the artistic direction, sets, costumes, music to the story line. Now, more than ten years later, after watching the DVD, I've noticed that the movie isn't as shocking as it was the first time around. I still wish the DVD version had subtitles in order to fully understand the thick, heavy British accent. Still, the movie can be enjoyed without even understanding the dialogue - almost as if it were a Silent movie.
And after ten years the only thing about the movie that looks aged are the trendy costumes that Gaultier designed.
The film's visual imagery continues to be its strongest asset with allusions to the Flemish and Spanish Masters of the Baroque Era

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