THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER Explained

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a film by British director Peter Greenaway, released in 1989. One of the most popular films (and, according to many, also the best) by the Briton, it tells the story of an English gangster, the titular thief, Albert Spica (Michael Gambon). Through gangster dealings, he takes over a London restaurant, Le Hollandais. Albert, along with his gang, including the dog-like loyal Mitchell (Tim Roth), spends every evening in the restaurant, eating and causing a ruckus. He is often accompanied by his mother, but most importantly, his beautiful and stylish wife Georgina (Helen Mirren). Albert is the film’s embodiment of pure evil: he is sadistic, conceited, arrogant, selfish, rude, vulgar, and boorish.

Greenaway himself admitted that he wanted to create a character that was evil to the core: I wanted to deliberately create, in an almost technical way, a character full of evil, who would not have any compensating positive traits. Albert cannot control his emotions, which results in constant outbursts of verbal and physical aggression, primarily directed at his titular wife, Georgina Spica, who accompanies him every day at the restaurant. Beautiful and classy, but intimidated by her husband, the woman makes eye contact one evening with a regular at Le Hollandais, a bookseller named Michael (Alan Howard). Michael is the opposite of Albert – he is polite, calm, and well-read, and he establishes a connection with Georgina. From their first glance, a passionate affair erupts between Georgina and Michael, continuing right under Albert’s nose. The lovers meet every evening at the restaurant. One time they hide in the bathroom, and then the titular cook, Richard Boarst (Richard Bohringer), who is friendly to Georgina, hides them in his kitchen.

When Albert finds out about the affair and starts searching for Georgina in the restaurant, the lovers escape in a meat-filled delivery truck to Michael’s apartment. They receive food from the kitchen boy, Pup (Paul Russell). After Pup is tracked down and brutally beaten by Albert, Georgina visits him in the hospital, thanks to information from the cook. During her absence, Albert’s gang breaks into Michael’s house and brutally tortures and murders the bookseller. Upon discovering her lover’s body, Georgina plans revenge and begs Richard to cook and prepare Michael’s body for her. After a long conversation, the cook agrees, and the next day Georgina orchestrates a confrontation with Albert at the restaurant, where she serves her husband the prepared body of her lover. Except for the loyal Mitchell, everyone turns against Albert. Georgina, pointing a gun at her husband, forces him to taste the human meat and then kills him.

In The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, a three-act narrative structure can be successfully distinguished. The moment of exposition, when we meet the characters and their relationships, is about the first fifteen minutes of the film. That’s when Georgina notices Michael in the restaurant, although she had previously glanced in the direction of his table four times. The moment she sees her future lover can be considered the first turning point, determining the film’s action and starting the first act. Georgina and Michael almost immediately become lovers, and during the initial act, their affair develops. Another turning point is when Albert learns of his wife’s affair. The time when the lovers hide in Michael’s apartment is a short, only about eighteen-minute-long, second act. It ends, of course, with Michael’s murder. The third act lasts about 30 minutes. It shows Georgina’s transformation and her revenge, ending with (and also concluding the entire film) Albert’s murder. This three-act division seems sensible, although the disproportionate length of each act may raise doubts. Fortunately, the director himself helps with the narrative structure, dividing the entire film into days of the week.

Perhaps this division is the most appropriate because it is natural. Time is measured by menu cards with the day of the week marked. The first such frame in the film’s narrative is Friday, although the film starts on Thursday, as indicated by the different attire of the characters during two different sequences. Until the moment Albert discovers the affair and Georgina and Michael’s escape, time flows normally, which is regularly noted in the film with frames: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. However, Wednesday and Thursday are missing; the next frame that appears in the film after the titular wife and lover’s escape is Friday – the day Georgina orchestrates the confrontation with Albert in the restaurant. The reason for this technique is simple – the menu frames with the day of the week appear in the film only when the characters are eating. Since Georgina is the main character and the point of reference for the viewer, the restaurant menu with the days of the week appears only when Georgina is having a meal at the restaurant. When she and Michael are already at the bookseller’s apartment, they eat the food Pup brings them from the restaurant. During the next two presumed days, the characters don’t eat anything, hence the absence of menu frames with the days of the week.

The choice of lighting and scenery contributes to the impression that the sun never rises in the film and that late evening or night constantly prevails. For this reason, it is difficult to determine where in the film’s structure Wednesday begins and where Thursday starts. It can be assumed that Wednesday is the day when Richard visits the lovers and informs them of Pup’s beating by Albert, and Thursday is the day when Georgina visits Richard in the restaurant and asks him to cook Michael’s body. It is quite clear when Wednesday ends – Georgina discovers her lover’s body and lies down beside it to sleep. See you in the morning, she says to Michael. When she wakes up the next day, something resembling a sunrise can be seen outside the window, suggesting that it is the next day. The absence of menu frames measuring time suggests that two days, Wednesday and Thursday, have been torn from the main character’s life. The traumatic events caused time to lose its significance, and Georgina stopped paying attention to it. This technique emphasizes her experiences and prioritizes them. It also marks, in some way, the transformation Georgina undergoes.

Space and its accompanying color are extremely important in the film. At the very beginning of the movie, after the opening credits, two characters pull back the curtains. There is an immediate sense of participating in a theatrical performance. This impression is heightened at the film’s very end – when Georgina kills Albert, the camera shows his body from the floor’s perspective. Then the red curtain falls – the spectacle has ended. These techniques enhance the suggestion of an operatic or theatrical structure of the film, and also justify the extensive use of saturated, theatrical color. The sense of theatricality is also strengthened by the way the camera is used. These are most often long parallel dolly shots, during which the viewer is in one static position, and only the images slide by. General and full shots dominate, as well as American and medium shots, while close-ups and extreme close-ups are extremely rare. They only appear in scenes where emphasis is placed on the emotional aspect. When Georgina discovers Michael’s body and lies beside it, there is a long close-up of the character’s face, during which she tells a poignant story of the violence she has experienced from her husband. During the last scene in the restaurant, the camera also moves in a close-up over the body of the lover prepared by the cook, to enhance the macabre effect. Sometimes large close-ups gain symbolic meaning, when the lovers’ sex scenes in the kitchen are interspersed with close-ups of chopped vegetables.

The dominant feature of the film *The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover* is undoubtedly the extensive use of color. Individual rooms, locations, and character costumes are saturated with different hues, and their intensity and saturation change. The film begins with a scene where Albert tortures a man on the street located at the back of the Le Hollandais restaurant. The place is bathed in a dark blue glow – the building, the street, and the characters’ costumes are blue. Georgina wears a blue dress, and Albert and his gang are girded with blue sashes. In many cultures, blue is associated with shade and black, with something negative and evil, also linked with death. The connection between blue and black is also pointed out in an interesting dialogue when Albert and Georgina head toward the restaurant:

ALBERT: If you’re going to wear black, don’t smoke. You look like a whore in black.

GEORGINA: It’s not black, it’s blue.

ALBERT: It’s black. And don’t smoke.

The choice of color and lighting seems appropriate concerning the place where criminal dealings are conducted – a desolate parking lot at the back of the restaurant, where hungry, wild dogs roam. The omnipresent fog and smoke make this space seem particularly unpleasant and cold. During the torture, two characters come out onto the parking lot – the kitchen boy, Pup, and the cook’s assistant. These characters are lit in green, which is the color of the kitchen.