The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Peter Greenaway, Netherlands/France 1989, 124 mins

Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) is a despicable local crime boss with a controlling interest in the "La Hollandaise" restaurant, run by Richard (Richard Bohringer), the head chef. Spica's avarice extends beyond money and food to a desire for greater social standing; yet his oafish behaviour, including his public verbal abuse of the cook and his own wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren), is in direct contrast to the decadent surroundings of the restaurant and its nouveau riche patrons.

The film follows several consecutive nights as Georgina meets and begins a passionate affair with Michael, a fellow diner at "La Hollandaise". The cook also defies his boss as he finds bolder venues within the restaurant for the lovers to continue their trysts. Once Albert becomes aware of his wife's unfaithfulness he takes swift and bloody revenge; however, it is Georgina's shocking retribution that forms the brutal, poetic denouement.

Cook / Thief is exquisitely shot, with a theatricality that pervades set and costume. There is constant juxtaposition: the sumptuousness of the dining room against the van of rotting meat where the lovers take refuge, Albert's constant roar and chatter versus the silence and demeanour of bookseller Michael (who doesn't speak for the first forty minutes of the film). Yet the same themes recur; the greed and excess of Albert is matched by Georgina's hungriness during her encounters with Michael, and Greenaway constantly reinforces that no-one is immune to man's base desires: food, sex and power, nor to man's base fear: death.

Many believe this film to be an allegory for Thatcherite Britain. Whatever the political undercurrents, this revenger tragedy is a mesmerising fable, full of stark imagery and a grisly yet emotionally gratifying ending.

Review by Claire Devlin
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2004

The Cook (Richard Bohringer) is head chef at an exclusive restaurant. The Thief (Michael Gambon), a vulgar and crude gangster, owns the restaurant and holds his court there. His Wife (Helen Mirren) is repulsed by his excesses and seeks physical and intellectual stimulation from her Lover (Alan Howard).

Over the course of a week the Wife and her Lover use the rest-rooms for their clandestine meetings, while the Thief goes through the Cook's menu and abuses all around him. Eventually he finds out about his Wife's affair and proclaims that he is going to kill and eat her Lover.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is a typical Greenaway exercise in intellectual formalism and extreme physicality - this unusual mix securing its status as probably the only art-house cannibal film.

The main themes of the film are also typically Greenaway - sex, death, decay and body as text. Of special note is the way in which he uses long tracking shots from one end of the restaurant to the other as a metaphor for the movement of food through the digestive system. Greenaway also plays on the division between the public and private zones of the restaurant, using changes in costume and lighting to highlight the way in which all this elegant food (the dining room) has an inelegant beginning (the kitchen) and end (the toilet).

As usual for a Greenaway film everything looks or sounds amazing, with fine production design, cinematography, Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes, and an instantly recognisable Michael Nyman score. The performances, from Tim Roth's henchman to Mirren's classy moll to Gambon's repulsive Thatcherite gangster are impressive with the exception of Bohringer, who seems to have difficulties with the language at times.

All in all, a sumptuous spread for those with the stomach for it.

Keith H. Brown
EUFS Programme 1998-99