The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
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The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a 1989 film written and directed by Peter Greenaway starring Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Alan Howard in the titular roles. This film is a black comedy, known as much for its depiction of cannibalism and frontal nudity as for its lavish and often breathtaking cinematography.
Jean-Paul Gaultier designed the costumes, and Michael Nyman wrote the score. Giorgio Locatelli created the prop food.
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[edit] Plot summary
Albert Spica (Gambon) is a violent gangster and part-owner of Le Hollandais, a restaurant which he and his circle of cronies visit in the evenings. Although Spica has pretensions to be a gourmet, he is in fact coarse in his tastes and ignorant about cuisine, and is also violent and insulting towards the other guests. His head chef Richard (Bohringer) despises him, but also fears him and is obliged to allow him to stay. Spica's wife Georgina (Mirren) is, it transpires, regularly abused by him, and is terrified of him. However, she begins to take an interest in one of the other guests, Michael (Howard), and, with Richard's collusion soon begins an extra-marital affair with him in the kitchen of Le Hollandais.
When Albert learns of the affair, he threatens to kill, cook and eat Michael, and Michael and Georgina take refuge in Michael's book store where he lives. Albert, however, tortures a young kitchen boy who knows their whereabouts and tracks them down. While Georgina is visiting the boy at the hospital, Albert orders Michael killed by having pages of his own books forced down his throat; Albert and his men then leave, and Georgina finds Michael's body.
Georgina brings the body back to Richard and asks him to cook it. At first he refuses, thinking she intends to eat it. However, when she explains that she intends to force feed the body to Albert, he agrees. Georgina, armed and surrounded by several of Albert's other victims, presents Michael's roasted carcass and, holding the gun on him, suggests that Albert "try the cock". Albert doesn't do this specifically but his resistance wears out and he takes a bite of Michael's flesh. Georgina then shoots him, contemptuously calling him "cannibal."
[edit] Symbolism
The film presents a conflict between the world of money, and the world of art and culture. It is an explicit criticism of the notion of their interchangeability, and it explores the way culture is debased and treated with contempt by those with money but no taste. The world of money is represented by Spica and his associates, while the world of culture is represented by Michael and Richard. Spica pretends to be a gourmet, but he knows that Georgina is the genuine article. Although he regards her as his possession, he is jealous of her knowledge and her easy familiarity with cuisine. Spica's only means of evaluating anything is by its financial value; when he sees Michael reading a book, he treats him with contempt, asking "does this stuff make any money"? The ultimate expression of Spica's hostility to all that Michael stands for is to have Michael killed by the very thing he loves the most, by making him choke on his own books.
The film was made near the end of Margaret Thatcher's time as Prime Minister, during which the power of the old class-based elites in British government and business had been eroded in favour of people who were financially successful.
Spica is the name of the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo [1]. This appears to associate Albert Spica with the star-counting in Drowning By Numbers. There is also a strong suggestion in the film that Albert Spica is impotent, hence perhaps literally a virgin himself.
[edit] Running time/rating controversy
The film's original running time was 124 minutes. It was slapped with an X rating when first released. It was later changed to the NC-17 rating. There were 2 versions of the film released on VHS in the 1990's. One was an R rated cut running 95 minutes, and the original version.
[edit] Reference in other media
- In the computer game The Curse of Monkey Island, one of the chapters in the game is entitled "The Bartender, The Thieves, His Aunt, and Her Lover."
- There is a The Simpsons episode entitled The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer.
- The video game Grand Theft Auto III features a string of four missions which names are all based on the film's title ("The Crook" - "The Thieves" - "The Wife" - "Her Lover"). The missions involve a dog food factory owner fooling his victims into entering his factory and turning them into dog food, but fails to kill the last target, who kills him instead with a shotgun and assumes control of his factory.
