Helen Mirren Filmography
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Role: Georgina Spica
Perhaps artistic films require obsession. Greenaway is surely obsessed with pushing the limits of his audience's disgust, but more than that, he seems to be deconstructing power, greed, pleasure. The Cook et al. is garishly colored, each room with its own theme, so that the characters' clothes change color as they step from one room into the next; the score moves everyone along like the chug of a train; and all of it illuminates the relationships of sex with death, food with excrement, pleasure with obscenity. The story has been interpreted politically, and in the end, it really is a cerebral film, despite its visceral images.
Mirren's Georgina grows from a submissive, pathetic wife to a viciously triumphant avenger. Her performance is fearless. With the cook in one of the final scenes, she argues for what she wants with a subtlety of her expression that reminds me of Tennison at her best. She's in it up to her feathered hat - and she's marvelous!
