Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 5, 1990                   TAG: 9005050320
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A STRONG STOMACH IS ADVISED FOR THIS ONE

Certainly, it's not an easy picture to digest, and the pun is very much intended. Among the subjects that it flaunts are lust, murder, torture, gluttony and cannibalism. It has been released without a rating because the Motion Picture Association of America tagged it with an X. Distributors have the option of releasing X-rated movies without any rating, and that's what Miramax has done.

The taboos that the film details appear in B-grade horror movies aplenty, and they haven't caused the controversy that surrounds this picture. But the cheesiness of those pictures dilutes the shock.

Here, writer-director Peter Greenaway embraces a highly stylized theatricality in an attempt to do the same. Greenaway has compared this to a Jacobean revenge play. Though its setting is contemporary, the movie casts a 17th-century mood with its rich colors, costumes and a painting by Franz Hals that dominates the main set. But as theatrical as it is, it stills remains unsettling as degradation is heaped on degradation and a mountain of organic corruption accumulates.

Much of the story takes place in a French restaurant where Albert (Michael Gambon) holds court. A successful criminal, Albert surrounds himself with ill-bred louts and lectures them on the culinary arts. He yearns to be culturally upscale and views the refinements of gourmet dining to be the key to his ambition. But Albert's coarseness and brutality is so ingrained that his efforts to be something else are futile. He bullies the restaurant's cook (Richard Bohringer), the patrons, and most of all his wife. Georgina (Helen Mirren) is disgusted by Albert and his cohorts, but she has been too brutalized and degraded to do anything but go along.

On one of the regular trips to the restaurant, she catches the eye of a solitary patron (Alan Howard) who is reading a book as he dines. He's an obvious contrast to the crude Albert, and Georgina is intrigued. With few preliminaries and no introductions, the bookish diner and Georgina begin a torrid affair in the restaurant's ladies' room. On subsequent days, they move to other areas of the restaurant, never far from the dangerous and powerful husband. When the thief finds out about his wife and her lover, he vows to kill the man and then eat him.

Greenaway begins the movie with a scatological scene that can hardly be described in a family newspaper. But it's not just that kind of scene that makes this such a disturbing movie. Cinematographer Sacha Vierny and the production designers have created a hellish culinary landscape. Piles of fish and fowl and slabs of meat cover the kitchen and rot in the trucks outside. The stench almost penetrates the theater, so vividly is all this depicted. Perhaps Greenaway is trying to jolt moviegoers who have seemingly been made unshockable by the excesses that dominate a lot of movies these days. You want excess, here is excess.

The performances are good - particularly that from Gambon, whose marathon obnoxiousness powers the story. The script has intelligence, and the direction shows a compelling style. But watching the movie is kind of like watching a snake swallow a mouse - fascinating and repellent at the same time. I'm not sure I'd want to see it twice. `The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and Her Lover' A Miramax picture at the Terrace Theatre (366-1677). Two hours long. Unrated but it contains explicit sex scenes, frontal nudity, extremely vulgar language and violence. No one under 18 should see this movie.