8. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1989)
Despicable Gangster, Albert Spica, takes over a high class restaurant and monopolises it each night with his gang of thugs - driving patrons away with his boorishness, but not seeming to care. He forces his well bred and elegant wife - Georgina - who attracts the attention of Michael - a mild mannered book store owner who frequents the restaurant alone. They begin an affair but are found out by Spica. Georgina hides out in Michael's book store whilst Albert tortures a young child who works at the restaurant to find out her whereabouts. While she is in hospital visiting the poor kid, Spica storms the book store and kills Michael by forcing him to eat pages from a book. When she finds Michael's body, Georgina is distraught and plots her revenge. She gets the French chef to cook Michael's body and forces Spica to eat some of his flesh and then shoots him in the head. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is a very good film, handled expertly by director Peter Greenaway, featuring strong performances by the likes of Michael Gambon as Albert Spica and Helen Mirren as Georgina, his long suffering wife. The aesthetics of the film - the costumes and surroundings - are very strong and unique. The film is perhaps Greenaway's finest hour but it is extremely hard to sit through due to its selective moments of unadulterated bad taste. There are moments in the film which are disturbing and nauseating in the extreme. I hardly need to mention Michael being cooked. That is an obvious bad taste moment. People are forced to eat s**t, eat books, hide out in vans swarming with animal carcasses. A young boy is tortured by having his navel cut out. The acts of transgression in the film rival movies like Cannibal Holocaust and Last House on the Left, and leave the viewer disgusted. But this is a sumptuously filmed art house movie! It goes to prove that bad taste does not automatically mean the film is a low budget movie or a horror movie. Bad taste is coming to an art house cinema near you...