Themes: Out For Revenge, Criminal's Revenge, Star-Crossed Lovers
Main Cast: Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard, Tim Roth
Release Year: 1989
Country: UK/NL/FR
Run Time: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: NC17
Plot
This is probably Peter Greenaway's most famous (or infamous) film, which first shocked audiences at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and then on both sides of the Atlantic. A gang leader (Michael Gambon), accompanied by his wife (Helen Mirren) and his associates, entertains himself every night in a fancy French restaurant that he has recently bought. Having tired of her sadistic, boorish husband, the wife finds herself a lover (Alan Howard) and makes love to him in the restaurant's coziest places with the silent permission of the cook (Richard Bohringer). Though less cerebral than Greenaway's other films, featuring deadly passions reminiscent of Jacobean revenge tragedies of the early 17th century, the picture still offers the director's usual ironic and paradoxical comments on the relations between eating and sex, love and death. The film is at once funny and horrific, and those who are not used to Greenaway's peculiar style might be even disgusted or shocked; however, one might mention Sacha Vierny's brilliant camerawork, Jean-Paul Gaultier's gaudily stylized costumes, and Michael Nyman's somber, pulsating music, which will haunt the viewer long after the film's end. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
Review
Filmmaker Peter Greenaway's most notorious film in a career marked by audacity, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover includes scenes of intense and shocking brutality and humiliation, fevered sexual encounters, and a final act of forced cannibalism. But what is most striking about the film is its visual style. Shot by the late, legendary Sacha Vierny in glorious widescreen compositions (this is a film that demands to be seen on video in a letterboxed edition), The Cook often unfolds like a medieval tapestry, as Vierny's camera tracks from one room of the restaurant, where most of the story takes place, to another. The characters are more types than flesh-and-blood people, as the title suggests. Michael Gambon gets to have the most fun out of his Thief, bellowing and flailing about. As in many other Greenaway films, the actors serve merely as game pieces to be moved about on a brilliantly designed board, but here, Greenaway offers a more linear story about the ways good people accommodate evil. If nothing else, The Cook is his most accessible film -- albeit for those with strong stomachs. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Ciarán Hinds - Cory; Liz Smith - Grace; Gary Olsen - Spangler; Ewan Stewart - Harris; Roger Ashton-Griffiths - Turpin; Ron Cook - Mews; Tony Alleff - Troy; Arnie Breevelt - Eden; Nick Brozovic - Kitchen Staff; Michael Clark - Waiter; Ian Dury - Terry Fitch; Brenda Edwards - Dancer; Hywel William Ellis; Tim Geary - Waiter; Elmer Gillespie - Patricia; Sophie Goodchild - Dancer; Bob Goody - Starkie; Janet Henfrey - Alice; Alex Kingston - Adele; Diane Langton - May Fitch; Gary Logan - Waiter; Michael Maguire - Waiter; Sue Maund - Kitchen Staff; Pauline Mayer - Fish Girl; John Mullis - Diner; Prudence Oliver - Corelle Fitch; Roger Lloyd Pack - Geoff; Karrie Pagano - Kitchen Staff; Saffron Rainey - Waiter; Peter Rush - Melter; Paul Russell - Pup; Ian Sears - Phillipe; Ben Stoneham - Meat Boy; Patricia Walters; Andy Wilson - Diner; Willie Ross - Roy; Alex Fraser
Credit
Jean-Paul Gaultier - Costume Designer, Peter Greenaway - Director, John Wilson - Editor, Michael Nyman - Composer (Music Score), Sjoerd Didden - Makeup, Sara Meerman - Makeup, Jan Roelfs - Production Designer, Ben Van Os - Production Designer, CinemaScope - Cinematographer, Sacha Vierny - Cinematographer, Pascale Dauman - Producer, Daniel Toscan du Plantier - Producer, Kees Kasander - Producer, Denis Wigman - Producer, Constance de Vos - Set Designer, Peter Greenaway - Screenwriter
The battered wife of a loathsome gangster has an affair with a man she meets at her husband's high-class restaurant, with gruesome consequences.
English gangster Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) has taken over the high-class La Hollandais Restaurant, run by French chef Richard Borst (Richard Bohringer). Spica makes nightly appearances at the restaurant with his retinue of thugs. His oafish behavior causes frequent confrontations with the staff and his own customers, whose patronage he loses, but whose money he seems not to miss.
Forced to accompany Spica is his reluctant, well-bred wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren), who soon catches the eye of a quiet regular at the restaurant, bookshop owner Michael (Alan Howard). Beneath her husband's eye, Georgina carries out an affair with Michael with the help of the restaurant staff. Ultimately Spica learns of the affair, forcing Georgina to hide out at Michael's bookshop. Borst sends food to Georgina through his young employee, a boy soprano who sings while working. Spica tortures the boy before finding the bookstore's location written in a book the boy is carrying. Spica's men storm Michael's bookshop while she is away and torture him to death by force-feeding him pages from his books. Georgina discovers his body when she returns.
Overcome with rage and grief, she begs Borst to cook Michael's body, and he eventually complies. Together with all the people that Spica wronged throughout the film, Georgina confronts her husband at the restaurant and forces him to eat Michael's cooked body. Spica complies, gagging, before Georgina shoots him in the head.
Cast
Richard Bohringer as Richard Borst, "The Cook". Borst is the owner and head chef of La Hollandais. He gallically resents Albert Spica, who has taken control of the restaurant.
Michael Gambon as Albert Spica, "The Thief". Spica is a violent gangster with pretensions of being a gourmet, but his coarse and violent behavior wreaks destruction on everyone around him.
Helen Mirren as Georgina Spica, "The Wife". Georgina is the sophisticated and battered wife of Albert Spica, whom she has unsuccessfully tried to escape.
Alan Howard as Michael, "The Lover". Michael is an erudite bookshop owner who dines at La Hollandais every night while reading a book. He carries on a doomed affair with Georgina.
Tim Roth as Mitchel, a dim-witted goon in Spica's gang.
Ciarán Hinds as Cory, a pimp who is ejected from Spica's gang after he protests Spica's brutal treatment of his girls.
The film's original running time was 124 minutes. Due to the content, the MPAA gave Miramax a choice of either an X rating or go unrated (adults only) for theatrical release. Unrated was chosen in light of the X rating being more associated with pornographic films. Two versions of the film were released on VHS in the 1990s. One was an R-rated cut running 95 minutes (mainly for large video store chains); the other was the original version.
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover is the twelfth album release by Michael Nyman and the ninth to feature the Michael Nyman Band. The album includes the first commercially released recording of Memorial.
There is some music in the film that is not included on the soundtrack album: the love theme for Michael and Georgina, which is "Fish Beach" from Drowning by Numbers, the song performed as a show in the restaurant, or a doubly-pulsed variation of Memorial that occurs about halfway through the film. Edits of "Memorial" appear throughout the film, with the entire twelve minute movement accompanying the final scene and end credits, but one variation is uniquely created for the film.
