Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

ironhorse_iv If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen, because director Peter Greenaway's food porn movie is one film that is really hard to digest. It's not for everybody. After all, the film's putrescence, debasement and excesses (sadism, cannibalism, torture, graphic fornication, puke, and rotting fish and meat) and scatological themes (force-feeding of excrement, urination on victims) forced the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) to give the film, an "X" rating for theaters, and a NC-17 rating by the time of its video release. An alternative R-rated version was indeed made, but it cut out about 30 minutes of footage. Regardless of what version, you try to watch; all of them, ends the same way, with your head over a brown bag, puking. It's just one of those types of a movie even if the nudity scenes are not that bad. Without spoiling the film, too much, the story also written by Greenaway was inspired by Jacobean revenge tragedies and name after four people that the director originally wanted to work with; it tells the story of a successful criminal, Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) with expensive tastes having just bought a French restaurant, where he holds court nightly drinking the finest wines and abusing staff and customers equally, while his mistreated wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren), secretly has an affair with a bookseller, Michael (Alan Howard). However, things become more troublesome for the secret lovers as Albert find out about their affair, setting off a chain of violent acts over the course of one night dinner party, which the main cook, Richard Boarst (Richard Bohringer) cannot stop. While, this film is not as shocking or offensive as other films like this, such as 1975's 'Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom' or 2010's 'A Serbian Film'; 1989's 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' did do something, besides having shock value. It was also somewhat beautiful metaphoric shot by cinematographer, Sacha Vierny. I love how Peter Greenaway and his crew designed this cruel, over-the-top, truth-telling film as an allegorical criticism of wasteful and barbaric upper-class consuming society in Western civilization (specifically Thatcherism and Reaganism of the 1980s). You do kinda see it, with the way, the cameraman shots people eating beautiful baroque style artwork of food, with their eating habits representing more like pigs feeding at a through, than proper dining etiquette. Its looks rather gross. Even the graphic sex scenes, while somewhat hot, are just as dirty. After all, porking near raw dead animals filmed with unflattering lighting isn't what I call, 'attractive'. Despite that, I love how huge and allegorical, this colorful restaurant is. It is a bizarre place, a mixer of post-modern pipes and medieval-looking cauldrons. Almost like a dream, of some sort. It's portray a sense of luxury and commodity to the point that it can be seen as a symbolism of Frans Hals style art, with the cook representing the artist, the theft as the forger, the wife as the populace and the lover as the intelligent circle. I also love how the kitchen and storage area (deep jungle-green), representing greed & decay, main dining room (hellish red), signifying blood & violence, the adjacent parking lot (dark blue) representing the coldness & death, and the restrooms (white) representing neutrality, and exactitude. It made a wonderful centerpiece for a Technicolor stage play with the costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier changing colors like a mood ring. You really do see the characters, reaction differently, with each location. The acting throughout this, is amazing, even if some of them, like Michael Gambon was a bit, hammy and Richard Bohringer, a bit limiting. They all have a part to play, here. While, some scenes in this movie can seem out of place and not needed like the singing dishwasher kid, Pup (Paul Russell), the spoon waiter, and the shirtless cook scenes that comes off as too bizarre and pretentious. For the most part, the pacing is alright, despite a few filler and padding. Another thing, great about this movie is the music, by composter, Michael Nyman. It's beautiful, stately, & elegiac, even if it's mostly a recopy of his 1985's 'Memorial' funeral piece. It remind me, so much of 17th century English composter, Henry Purcell in the way, it adds immeasurable depth of feeling. Overall: Although, it's not easy to sit through this surreal, somewhat avant garde film. It's also impossible to turn away from the screen. It's like a beautiful train wreck. You hate to see it, but can't help, yourself for taking a look. I can only recommended it, for people that had morbid curiosity about certain people's inhumanity. There is no fine dining here.

ancientnoise I got to this film years ago, quite by accident. I read an essay in "Postmodernism: A Reader" by Michael Nyman, when I was a student. This was at the same time that The Piano arrived on the big screen, so went to see that and investigated more.This, for me, is the best marriage of Greenaway and Nyman. The way the music shifts, in mood and temperament, with the scene and the backdrop and clothes is unique and memorable.Helen Mirren is a star here, but for me it's Spica, a great and lasting performance by Michael Gambon that stands out.Its enormous, cavernous looks, its story, its flamboyance, its cruelty. All of this with Nyman's beautiful score, harsh and delicate. Why a 10? Well, I reserve my 10 out of 10 for movies that answer the question "would I watch again, now, for the umpteenth time?".

gavin6942 The wife (Helen Mirren) of an oafish restaurant owner (Michael Gambon) becomes bored with her husband and considers an affair with a regular patron (Alan Howard).First thing worth noting is the color scheme, with its bright red, blue, green and white. Not just a clever way to indicate what room the action is in, but a great use of the colors themselves. There is the risk that too much color is garish, but not here. Perhaps the best use of color since "Suspiria".Then, you have the bold nudity, not typical in an English-speaking film. Helen Mirren, fully nude for several minutes? And Alan Howard, flopping in the breeze? You bet. But it is not just nudity for nudity's sake. It really shows how vulnerable these folks are.

videorama-759-859391 There are people out there, who absolutely hate this film. I can run down a few names. I liked it when I was 20. At the end of it, I had to sit down for a half and an hour, getting over what I had just seen in the shocking finale of it, in it's near 2 hrs running time. Some people out there, just won't appreciate the film, as if it takes an acquired taste to like it. Gambon, in an unlike Gambon performance, which I still consider this to be his best work, plays one of the scariest mobsters in film, apart from Pesci in Goodfellas that same year. Oh bring on the nineties. Gambon owns this expensive, lavish restaurant. Just check out the loud sets and costumes. The dishes of food are too little, and aren't to everything's taste, although you haven't seen the final dish, a distasteful offering. Gambon just revels in this ugly character, going all out with it. He's a thug, bully, oaf, has no respect for woman, or mercy, when it comes to people owing debts. By example at the start, in an exterior shot, just outside the restaurant, one poor sod is being basted in faeces, left to wash himself down, amidst barking dogs loitering around him. We then pull away, pan across into the kitchen, some cooks shirtless, and they we come into the extravagant dining area. Gambon's wife, Georgina, played by the great Helen Mirren, back in the day, when she was much less known, is the butt of Gambon's abuse, physical and verbal. Gambon too, hates the fact that she smokes. Throughout the night, she keeps looking off, attracted to this average looking guy, loner, sitting afar, who likes to bring a few books to his dine ins. Gambon points out a harsh truth, when striking up a quick conversation with the stranger about lonely diners and their books. Soon this guy and Mirren are having a sexual affair, trotting off to the loos, every five minutes, and where ever they can do it, in secrecy, and when hubby finds out, he sees red. And in the finale, as concerning the last course, what goes around, really goes around. Watch out too for the fool of Gambon's gang, the fine Tim (pre Mr Orange) Roth as Mitchell, who likes to push Gambon. Judge for yourself, this film, especially lovers of visual cinema. It's up to you to have the final vote.