DVD Review: 'The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover'

Cameron Birnie uncovers some dusty classics and hidden gems from the local video store.

W.H. Auden wrote that "Evil is unspectacular and always human - it shares our bed and eats at our own table."

In The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989), directed by Peter Greenaway, we share a table for two hours with Albert Spica, the 'thief' of the title, a tyrant of proportions unrivalled anywhere in cinema.

We watch him as he gorges on French delicacies in banquet after obscene banquet, humiliates his wife, berates the hordes of half-wit cronies who accompany his every move, assaults the restaurant's staff and patrons, and dominates conversation with little gems like, "I think those Ethiopians enjoy starving. Keeps them thin and graceful."

And in the few scenes that take place outside Le Hollandaise, the temple of excess where Albert sates his appetite, we watch him torture, rape and kill.

Michael Gambon is one of England's finest actors, and Albert Spica is his finest role.

His performance is so hypnotic that we barely notice twenty minutes into the film how completely his character has dominated the action so far, how everything we know of the other characters we know only from their subtle reactions to Albert's demonstrations of power..

This all changes when the real drama begins, as Albert's bored, stoically graceful wife Georgina (Helen Mirren) locks eyes with Michael (Alan Howard), the lover, an intellectual who sits at the opposite side of the restaurant each night, too absorbed in his books to be bothered by the vulgarity issuing from Albert's table.

Georgina and Michael slip away to the ladies room and begin a passionate tryst that will continue every night, right under Albert's nose.

The audacity of the lovers' deception, coupled with the constantly unfolding evidence of the thief's potential for sadism, creates an almost unbearable tension.

When he inevitably discovers his wife's betrayal, the film reaches an ecstatic, brutal fever pitch, culminating in acts of revenge and counter-revenge that must be seen to be believed, ideally on an empty stomach.

Visually and musically, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover is intoxicating.

From the majestic sweep of Sacha Vierny's camera to Jean-Paul Gaultier's outrageously baroque costumes, it is loaded with stylistic innovation.

Watch Georgina's dress change colour as she moves from the kitchen, to the restaurant, to the restrooms.

The film was widely read as an attack on Thatcherism when it was released.

In this reading, the cook stands in for the civil servants of the state, the thief for the political and corporate elite, the wife for the oppressed poor and the lover for the opposition of artists, intellectuals and leftists - ineffectual on its own, but unstoppable in coalition with the other forces.

I think this is an insightful analysis, but the righteous anger of the film is by no means limited to the conservative politics of 1980s Britain.

It is dense with references to 16th and 17th century Europe, the French Revolution and the Catholic Church, and its cocktail of decadence and debauchery alludes to both the fall of Rome and the possible future of consumer capitalism.

If it isn't already apparent, I should probably ram home the point that this film is not for the faint-hearted.

It was given an X-rating by American board of censors, effectively a stamp of financial doom, adding fuel to the still-unresolved debate there over why there is no rating available to intelligent films for adults.

The reality is that the history of the human race is not for the faint-hearted either, and if there's one thing The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover has on its side, it's the awful, unmistakable ring of truth.