The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
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VHS Movie Reviews of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
Movie Review: Brutal, Grotesque and Great
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a movie many people either love or hate; and I like it a lot. It's all style, all color, all rage. A thief (Michael Gambon as Albert Spica) and his wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren) with his toadies and gang members dine each night at the restaurant of the cook (Richard Bohringer). Spica is a monster; crude, loud and a bully with the table manners of a hog. The first scene in the movie is Spica, his gang and their women getting out of their cars in a dark, wet alleyway and preparing to enter the restaurant through the kitchen. But first they deal with a guy who owes Spica money. His gang brings Spica dog excrement on pieces of paper; Spica wipes the stuff all over the other guy's face and mouth. They strip him down while the women watch and Spica continues to smear him. He pokes at the cowering man on the ground with his cane, while others kick at him. Then he urinates on him...but chews out a toadie who was going to do the same because the toadie might offend the women. Spica's behavior doesn't get any better. Georgina Spica wears matyrdom like a cloak. Eating every night in the restaurant is a shy, book-loving man (Alan Howard) who ignores the uproar Albert and his gang create. He and Georgina see each other and he becomes her lover, making love everywhere in the restaurant that they can find where it's quiet, with the help of the cook. The thief finds out and deals with the lover. The wife takes her revenge with the complicity of the cook in a grotesque and appropriate way.
Sounds simple enough, but this movie is a powerhouse. The look of the film, like so much of Greenaway's stuff, is lush and highly stylized. The rooms of the restaurant have their own colors and the costumes of the actors change colors as they move from room to room. The kitchen is huge and strange, with boiling kettles, hanging instruments and tables piled high with glassware and dishes; with geese being plucked in clouds of feathers; with fat, half-naked men stirring steaming sauce pans. A white-haired, retarded boy does simple tasks while singing in a counter-tenor.
The movie, I think, seems to be about anger and retribution. Gambon is a powerful as Albert Spica, completely repellant, domineering and absolutely fascinating. Helen Mirren is superb, and one of the bravest actors around. Her humiliation at the hands of her husband just goes on and on. Her scenes of sexual escape with Alan Howard are hardly erotic, but they are explicit and strong.
Greenaway has done a number of films. I think a lot of Prospero's Books (1991) and The Draughtsman's Contract (1982). He's a guy you have to get in the mood for, though. He doesn't make easy films.
Movie Review: Cook Thief Wife Lover
Summary: 4 Stars
The Cook, as becomes his station, is above it all.
The Thief is a glutton, and a wicked, wicked man.
The Wife is beautiful, bored and abused.
Her Lover likes to read while he eats.
Everything in THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER is larger than life. Sets are huge, colors are garish, the loud bad guy is very loud, and very bad, indeed. Although Michael Gambon gives an appropriately broad reading to his villainous character, the mordant humor of it all creates an irredeemable flaw. Some people will respond to his evil shenanigans with disgust rather than amusement. Still others will find it jarring when the volume is lowered.
Helen Mirren delivers an emotional monologue near the end of the picture that I found curiously unmoving. If felt like a quiet, human moment plopped down in the middle of a broad farce, and the abrupt change of tone created an emotional chasm that I couldn't cross.
CTWL won't appeal to everybody. If you don't connect with its dark, situational humor, its brutality may be a little too much to bear.
Movie Review: You have to be in the mood.
Summary: 4 Stars
Should you care to be hypnotized and weirded out at the same time, try this genre-hopper. It's a comedy, but it's also gross. It's a thinker, but at some moments, it's also a stinker. Watch this on a rainy afternoon with your favorite sarcastic friend.Movie Review: Worst Film of All Time!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Take away the visual style, set pieces, production and direction and THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER has no redeeming value. It is a film of excess, gore, humiliation, and decadence. This is a detestable movie with characters we don't care about and an ending that is so graphically sick it is beyond reproach. Why this film is hailed as great by some people defies explanation. To find out why by watching again wouldn't change this reviewers mind. This reviewer would rather watch JACKASS:THE MOVIE...at least there is some humor and comedy to all the decadence in that film.Movie Review: Repulsive and Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
While i don't recall from any of Shakespeare's work a scene in which a naked chef is smeared with dog crap and then urinated on, it would be easy to compare this Greenaway film to that of a Shakespeare tragity. The beautiful and corrupt wealthy, the fight of good versus evil & inevitable loss of good, and finally the gut-wrenching revenge.
"The Cook The Theif His Wife and Her Lover" is an amazingly well crafted movie, with a magnificant script and casting to match, beautiful cinematography and art direction, excellent acting and to top it all off, a haunting soundtrack.
The plot of the film is basically the title, but explained a bit more, the plot is as followes: The theif buys out a resturant, determined to make it HIS favorite resteraunt, he insists on using his on selection of meat, fish and other ingredients. His wife is disgusted by her husband and his childish behaviour, so thus finds herself a lover, just a few seats away. Making frequent trips to the bathroom, wife and lover make their greatest efforts not to be discovered.
Wierd as it is, this is a wonderful movie. It's left a lasting impression that i'm sure never to forget.