Cook, the Thief, the Wife, and her Lover, The (1989): Peter Greenaway Controversial Jacobean Drama, Starring Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren

There is no in-between: You are either going to admire or to despise The Cook, the Thief, the Wife, and her Lover, British director Peter Greenway’s brutal Jacobean revenge drama represents an unhinged assault on all of the viewers senses, carrying the very experience of the film to the extreme.

Grade: A- (**** out of *****)

Promoting the film in New York, Greenaway described the impulses behind this work as being a combination of “technical, aesthetic, cerebral, and academic motives,” and judging by the movie’s overall impact, it fits quite well each of the aforementioned adjectives (or rather categories).

Thematically, depicting lust, adultery, jealousy and revenge, “The Cook” is a variation of a neo film noir—only more delibertaely brutal and more intentionally aggressive.

The film, with its formalist structure, visual symmetry, recurring patterns and symbols, and numerous puns and conceits, is bth provocative and entertaining in an unconventional ways.

The Cook, the Thief is built around the four characters of the title, with each of the quartet getting an individualitsic treatment via their physical appearance, (mis) conduct, speech, and mannerisms.

Narratively, it’s set in a huge restaurant, with each room representing its own historical era, the tradition of table painting, and a strategy that connects the seemingly opposites (but actually complementary) parts of the mouth with the anus, food with the feces, and sex with death.

The brilliant Michael Gambon plays the Thief, who is (deliberately and schematically) contrasted with Alan Howard’s Lover. In fact, they represent diametrically opposite men. The Thief is boorish, ignorant, and crass, taking pride of his possessions, whereas the Lover is sensitive, gentle, well-mannered, and cultured.

The great actress and sensual looking Helen Mirren plays the femme fatale in the midst of the triangle, Georgina Spica, the wife-adulteress.

Richard Borst, the cook (Richard Bohringer), serves as the director’s spokesperson, sort of a narrator or storyteller, who maintains a relatively neutral position, observing events and characters as they unfold.

Designed as provocation, Greenaway’s film tests the limits of what’s considered permissible and tolerable, and it’s therefore not shocking that the saga contains physical abuse, graphic torture, brutal rape, and cannibalism.

Some semioticians have terpreted the film as an allegory of the Thatcher era of corporate economy, unbridled greed, and cass schism, and as such a fierce condemnation of consumerism, cynicism, greed, and vulgar taste.

To put it more bluntly, the film’s premise suggests that as human (or subhuman) species, ultimately, we are what we eat! and how we eat!

Thus, I predict that the film, which was made in 1989, two years bef0re the end of Thacherism, would withstand well the test fo time due to its rich formalist structure and style.

Cast

Richard Borst, the Cook (Richard Bohringer)

Albert Spica, the Thief (Michael Gambon)

Georgina Spica, the Wife (Helen Mirren)

Michael, the Lover (Alan Howard)

Mitchel (Tim Roth)

Cory (Ciaran Hinds)

Spangler (Gary Olsen)

Harris (Ewan Stewart)

Turpin (Robert Ashton Griffiths)

Mews (Ron Cook)

Credits