Delayed Reaction: The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover

Premise: The wife of a crime boss carries on an affair under his nose at the restaurant he owns.

 

The list of NC-17 rated movies that made real money in the U.S. box office is limited but interesting. They seem to come in two categories: movies that never cared about the MPAA rating and movies that gave up on getting an R-rating. I remember Shame (#9 on the list) working to get the rating down, but the MPAA penis rules are too strict. I don't think Last Tango in Paris (#1 on the list) ever worried about its rating. I suspect Paul Verhoeven never even thought about what the Showgirls (#2) rating would be until he finished it. Given all the TV edits of the film, I'm surprised he didn't agree to an R-cut. Or maybe that would've been impossible, because they'd be left with a 15-minute film. Kids (#5) surely earned street cred with its rating. I've been conditioned to think of NC-17 as one step away from porn, but looking at the list, there are a lot of movies I'm actually pretty curious to see. It's more accurate to say the top NC-17 movies are mostly passion projects that the filmmakers didn't feel like compromising on.

 

I'm pretty sure the only reason I'm aware of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover is due to its infamy as one of the most successful NC-17 movies. Well, that and the memorable title. I didn't know what to expect from it. Compared to most R movies, the main difference with this movie is that it shows some more penis. Otherwise, it's hard to point to this being any more violent than a Scorsese movie.

 

It's a pretty audacious film. I loved the cinematography and overall look of the movie. Much of the movie is filmed with long panning shots, going left or right across giant soundstage rooms. There are maybe 5 rooms in the entire movie and the whole thing looks like it was shot in a dressed-up airplane hangar. The ceilings are so high and the look is so stagey that I half expected to see stagehands dressed in black to pop in to redress the room for the next scene. It's all very hypnotic: the stylish production design, the patient and steady camera movement, and the operatic music. This movie is so damn confident that I nearly fell in love with it.

There is one big impediment though, and it's not accidental. Michael Gambon as the titular Thief is a lot to deal with. That is an ugly character who won't shut the hell up. His presence is such an assault that, as much as I was transfixed by the rest of the movie, I wanted to turn it off, just to shut him up. That's intentional. The movie is about his comeuppance, and I do have to hate him for it to work. For me, it tips the scales a little too much. It's like salt on my popcorn. I love a lot of salt, but there is a tipping point where it's too much and ruins the whole bowl. That's this movie: delicious popcorn with too much salt.

 

Good cast overall though. Gambon plays the Thief too well, basically. Helen Mirren is nice as the Wife. I forget how much she got naked earlier in her career and how much she likes doing cockney accents. Alan Howard as "Her Lover" is fine. The Cook, Richard Bohringer, isn't as prominent as the title suggests. It was fun seeing some other now familiar faces in smaller roles. Tim Roth is in there. Alex Kingston is a glorified extra, which was very confusing. I kept waiting for her to have more to do, only to remember that she was a 26-year-old nobody at the time this was made.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend