MOVIE: THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER

Cross-posted with LA & OC Weirdo Music & Art Forum

Date: Sunday, August 24, 7:30 pm

Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Phone: (714) 285-9422

Dinner 6:00 TBD

Tickets: $13 - Multiple showings - select 8/24 at 7:30 pm
https://thefridacinema.org/movies/the-cook-the-thief-his-wife-her-lover/

Trailer here

Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 87% positive rating. There are no lukewarm reviews. Love or hate!

Director: Peter Greenaway Run Time: 124 min. Rating: NC-17 Release Year: 1989
Starring: Alan Howard, Helen Mirren, Michael Gambon, Richard Bohringer, Tim Roth

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, a lurid, operatic masterpiece of gluttony, sumptuous beauty, and brutal vengeance, all set to Nyman’s famously haunting score, and almost entirely within the lavish confines of a French restaurant.

Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), a grotesquely boorish gangster, terrorizes guests and staff with his vulgarity and violence night after night at a fancy restaurant named Le Hollandais. His long-suffering wife Georgina (Helen Mirren), who quietly endures his abuse, begins a passionate affair with a gentle bookseller (Alan Howard), meeting him in secret among the restaurant’s corridors, kitchens, and storerooms. What unfolds is a richly stylized operatic tragedy, with color-coded sets that shift with each room, vibrant costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier, and one of Michael Nyman’s most iconic scores.

Transforming the restaurant into a world of moral rot where food, flesh, and vengeance are all served with theatrical flourish, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a cinematic feast that’s both decadent and disturbing, sensual and sickening, and completely unforgettable.

Rated NC-17. No one under the age 0f 18 will be admitted.

About GREENAWAY & NYMAN
British artist, writer, and director Peter Greenaway’s cinema is unmistakable — baroque, cerebral, and boldly theatrical, his films unfold like elaborate paintings, rich with symbolism, obsession, and wry absurdity. Equally distinctive is fellow British composer Michael Nyman, whose hypnotic, minimalist scores pulse with alternating elegance and urgency. Together, their collaborations form a sublime marriage of image and sound, a cinematic alchemy that’s as unsettling as it is exquisite.