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starring: Helen Mirren
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301783019
Format: Color, Special Edition, NTSC
ISBN: 6301783018
Label: Lions Gate/Trimark Home Ent.
Manufacturer: Lions Gate/Trimark Home Ent.
Number Of Items: 1
Publication Date: 1990-10
Publisher: Lions Gate/Trimark Home Ent.
Release Date: March 30, 1994
Sales Rank: 4252
Studio: Lions Gate/Trimark Home Ent.
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Whether viewed as a darkly funny social allegory, pretentious cinematic masturbation, or a striking tale of lust and revenge, this controversial art-house hit is inarguably one hell of a rough, disturbing ride. Director/writer/painter/novelist Peter Greenaway arrived from the avant-garde school. His layered, cerebral aesthetic should be viewed on numerous levels. This examination of a deadly love triangle--set mostly inside a garish upper class restaurant--is his most conventional movie.
Every night inside the same French restaurant, a browbeaten Cook (Richard Bohringer) prepares an extravagant, obscene meal for a boorish Thief (Michael Gambon, frighteningly reprehensible here), his tormented Wife (Hellen Mirren, beautiful amongst the ugliness), and his yes-men crew. While the Thief humiliates everyone at his table, he fails to notice when his Wife begins a torrid affair with a quiet customer (the Lover, Alan Howard) sitting across the restaurant. This nightly game continues until the couple is discovered, setting up numerous acts of unspeakable revenge from both sides.
Though containing a fairly straightforward narrative, Greenaway saturates his study with a haunting Michael Nyman score, photographs it with endless horizontal tracking shots that extend forever, and complicates it with strict color schemes, various painting allusions and by doubling his characters as British class symbols. He also depicts behavior involving defecation, sadism/masochism, explicit sexuality, cruel torture and shame, graphic violence and cannibalism with unflinching glee and rare beauty. This isn't suggesting that such imagery is gratuitous, as Greenaway employs a visceral approach to suggest the desperate mental state of his characters--or pure rage and disgust, if it's to be read as a depiction of the divided state of the British class system under Thatcher. --Dave McCoy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - a work of art
Not in Hollywood style, but who is looking for that, anyway? Please see this movie even once in your life!!! Enjoy.
Rating:  - Excellent . . . if you're pathological
Stylistically perfect and visually gorgeous, this is also one of the most unremittingly sadistic and gruesome movies ever made. If you can watch this one over and over, as the writer from Portland, Maine, confesses, you really do need to seek professional help. (But in the meantime, don't stop watching it -- that might be the only thing keeping you from doing something horrible.)
Rating: - A delectible sight for any artistic eye
One of the best films I have ever viewed. All aspects of this film are cautiously and intelligently thought out allowing it to shine. Characters, music, plot and artistic staging are brilliant. I truely love watching this film again and again. I have already seen it approximately 18-20 times and enjoy it more and more!
Rating: - Very Good
The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover is typical Peter Greenaway. This film is explicit, cruel and the cinematography is wonderful. This film is a work of art. This film is not for all tastes, there are similarities to his other work of arts, such as The Pillow Book. Try to view the uncut version. PLEASE SEE MY OTHER REVIEWS.
Rating: - Greenaway's "Satyricon"
What most people seem to miss in this film is that the wife and her lover are not victims. They are every bit as guilty and boorish in their own way as the horrible thief is. Their escape from the thief's sinful self-indulgence is by way of luxurious stimulation, continuing to gorge on exquisitely metaphoric cuisine and screwing artfully. This is Greenaway's "Satyricon", a picture of the evils of hedonism, and certainly a class commentary. Brilliantly done, and only ever so slightly condemning ... Read More
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