At the center sits Spica, the chaotic, evil disturbance in an otherwise idyllic situation.
THE COOK THE THIEF THE WIFE THE LOVER MOVIE
Despite the lavish set, gorgeous costuming and delicate performances of Mirren and Howard, CTWL is graphic from beginning to end, literally: The movie opens with murder and closes with murder. When Georgina falls in love with another patron, solitary writer Michael (Alan Howard), the Cook facilitates their affair, hiding them in various parts of the restaurant while Spica dines, oblivious. Spica bullies the restaurant staff into serving him and torments his wife Georgina (Helen Mirren). Further right is a grand, red dining hall, where along table is set for the Thief, Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), and his goons. Slide to the right and enter the kitchens, where the Cook (Richard Bohringer) makes his first appearance. On the very left is the restaurant’s entrance, paved and dark, where truckloads of food are unloaded in the opening scene. It’s almost like being at the theatre, and as a result, the plot unfolds along a horizontal axis. The restaurant setting is mostly filmed from one side, allowing the audience to glide parallel to the set. The dominant reds, greens and whites create a timeless, baroque style, complemented by Jean Paul Gauthier’s futuristic costume design. The entire work is visually breathtaking. It occurred to me after watching the final scene of Peter Greenaway’s 1989 film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
THE COOK THE THIEF THE WIFE THE LOVER FULL
I must have come full circle, I thought, and I never wanted to see a horror movie ever again.Īt fifteen, however, I came up with a different theory. In hindsight, The Ring’s poorly aged special effects seem like a weird tipping point for a tween who watched The Shining without batting an eye, but so be it. For weeks afterwards, I was too scared to sleep in my own bed. They were the ones who recommended the movies in the first place, and we would all sit down to watch them together, but even they knew The Ring was too much for a twelve-year-old. My parents were concerned about me by this point. Each outlandish flick pushed me to seek out similar worlds filled with unhinged displays of cheap violence. Besides merely embracing violence, many of these movies pushed horror to the point of ridicule. I could always count on From Dusk Till Dawn and Machete, the Robert Rodriguez masterpieces, for a quick (nervous) laugh. I loved Paris Hilton’s forehead getting impaled in House of Wax. I was awed by Kill Billand its exaggerated blood sprays. The truth is - and I wish I’d known this before The Ringscared me out of this phase at twelve - I didn’t love horror so much as I loved gory B movies. For two years all I wanted to do was watch blood spill, spray and splatter. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shiningwas to blame for that - after seeing that sweet work of genius, I was strapped in for a horror phase. When I was ten, I lived close to a Blockbuster and loved getting creeped out.