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

The characters playing the main roles in this grotesque, brutal drama with its baroque, exaggerated style are listed in the film’s title. Their actions and the relationships between them are the main axis of the plot and its driving force.

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.

It is worth noting the reversed order of rooms in the restaurant. Not once do we see the front entrance to Le Hollandais; the characters always enter and exit from the kitchen side. The dominant color of this room is the previously mentioned green. The entire room is bathed in a greenish light, although the people working there—the titular cook, Richard, and his numerous kitchen assistants—are dressed in white. The color of the characters’ clothing changes from blue to green as they enter this room. Georgina’s dress takes on an olive hue, while the sashes of Albert and his gang become distinctly dark green. Upon crossing the threshold of the kitchen, the mood and atmosphere of the room also change.

For the first time, music appears—Pup sings an operatic aria accompanied by a non-diegetic choir. This music creates an impression of sanctity, a transition from the realm of the profane (the street) to the sacred. The use of classical music, which will always accompany this room, turns the space into a church, a sacred place. It is a temple of culinary art, with the titular cook as its master. This is his kingdom. Richard cleverly mocks Albert’s crudeness, responding to his rudeness and malice with sarcasm and irony.

The cook does not allow himself to be dominated, and Albert never uses violence against him—it seems that to some extent, he respects Richard. The cook also has a certain degree of autonomy; the kitchen is his kingdom, where the thief does not attempt to rule. Richard’s superiority over Albert comes from his knowledge and expertise in the culinary arts. He prepares all the dishes, and Albert does not interfere with the cooking process. Richard prepares special dishes for Georgina and Michael, different ones for Albert. In doing so, the cook establishes his own order, deciding what to serve to whom. Therefore, the kitchen, Richard’s kingdom, will later become a refuge for Georgina and Michael.

It is here, among the food and the sounds of chopping, mixing, and sharpening knives, that they make love and talk for the first time. The space, which does not belong to Albert, is safe for them—at least for a time. When the thief learns about his wife’s affair, he demolishes the kitchen. When Georgina later returns to the restaurant to ask Richard to prepare Michael’s body, the kitchen is deserted. This also shows how important the main character is to this space. There is a bond of understanding between her and the cook. Your wife has an excellent palate, Mr. Spica, Richard says to Albert. The cook creates special dishes for her and values her opinion—when Georgina is in the kitchen, he lets her taste the dishes and even allows her to influence their preparation.

Waiters frequent the kitchen who—like Pup and the kitchen assistant in the earlier street sequence—wear colors associated with the space to which they belong. In the blue scene, Pup and the assistant are bathed in green light; the waiters entering the kitchen are dressed in red outfits. When Pup visits the hiding Georgina and Michael much later, he will wear clothing from two different Le Hollandais spaces—green pants and a red waiter’s jacket.

Red is the dominant color of the dining room. Here, Georgina’s dress changes color from olive to red, and the men’s sashes turn red. The clothes or clothing elements of other restaurant guests are also red. The walls, floor, curtains, tablecloths, and tulips on the tables are red. The room is sumptuous, slightly baroque. This is the space ruled by Albert. At the table, where practically no one but him speaks, he delivers endless tirades. The ubiquitous red underscores his explosive, cruel, and aggressive temperament. It is in this room that Georgina meets Michael. Unlike the main characters and the people present in the dining room, he is dressed in a brown suit. The color of his outfit does not change when he follows Georgina into the white bathroom or hides with her in the kitchen. His entire apartment is also maintained in various shades of brown. Even when he is dead and cooked by the chef, his body is brown.

In the bathroom, the color of Georgina’s dress turns white, as does Albert’s sash when he searches for her there multiple times. It seems that the bathroom is a place where the protagonist feels relatively safe; it is a space assigned to her. The room emanates calm and gentleness. The decor does not match the slightly kitschy, overly elegant dining room. The bathroom is ascetic and orderly. It is here that Georgina and Michael’s first intimate encounter occurs. In this context, white may symbolize the authenticity, purity, and sincerity of the lovers’ feelings.

It seems that the color of the characters’ clothing illustrates their personalities and serves to show the transformations they undergo. All characters under Albert’s strong, direct influence, like Georgina or his gang, wear clothes whose colors change as they move from one room to another. These characters are subordinated to him, becoming like him. Even Georgina’s cigarettes, which seem to be a means of expressing resistance against Albert’s tyranny, become blue, green, red, and white in different rooms.

Georgina’s color-changing cigarette – green, white, and red.

The only characters immune to Albert’s influence are the lover and the cook. Michael’s brown suit does not change, indicating his composure and constancy. The bookseller does not succumb to outside influences and remains himself throughout the film. In his apartment, the curtains, books, bed, sheets, blanket, and robe he gives Georgina are all brown. There is no natural light in the entire film, yet its only potential source is seen in Michael’s apartment—the sun rises and sets behind a large window. The protagonist has a positive influence on Georgina, for whom an affair with a caring and understanding man offers a chance to escape her husband’s tyranny.

In his apartment, she is naked, unburdened by the colorful, elegant clothes she wore in the restaurant. Her hair falls on her shoulders, loose and unkempt. Michael pulls her out of the oppressive order of the restaurant, ruled by Albert.

Richard’s outfit, on the other hand, is always white, the uniform of a chef. However, in the final scene, he wears a black suit and a white shirt. This marks the protagonist’s transformation; he is no longer the thief’s servant. From a passive observer, he becomes an active participant. Georgina also transforms from a victim to an aggressor, as do all those whom Albert had bullied.

Numerous references to painting, also common in other films by Peter Greenaway, are significant dominants of the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. The previously mentioned static frames and the wide shot distance evoke associations with painting. The director is primarily inspired by Dutch painting, which is evident in the composition of frames showing still lifes made of fish and seafood, meat, and dead birds.

17th-century Dutch painting often had a moralizing dimension, reminding of the temporality of life on earth, in line with the motto vanitas vanitatum. This was exemplified by peeled lemons about to spoil, present on the table where Albert and his gang feast. This can be read as a critique of Albert’s gluttony and food waste. Perhaps the lemons also foreshadow Albert’s impending death, which the conceited and self-assured protagonist does not anticipate.

The most significant artistic context for the creation of the characters is the large painting hanging on the restaurant wall. It is The Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Civic Guard from 1616 by Frans Hals, a Dutch painter and an excellent portraitist. Such group portraits were characteristic of the Netherlands at the time and were called Schuttersstuk. Already in the first scene, one can notice that Albert and his gang members wear outfits inspired by 18th-century Dutch costumes. Their resemblance to the men depicted in Hals’s painting is hard to miss when, in the dining room, their sashes turn red, just like in the painting.

Schuttersstukken depicted members of the civic guard, who were not professional soldiers but volunteered for the community. They were usually respected individuals, townsmen, representatives of the middle class. Such paintings were meant to emphasize the unity and friendship among the brotherhood members. The genesis and success of this kind of painting are associated with the social and collective sense of the Dutch, who achieved so much primarily thanks to solidarity and voluntary associations, wrote art historian Maria Rzepinska. In this context, juxtaposing the painting on the wall with the thief’s wife, thief, and his gang sitting at the table gains an ironic tone. There are no positive values in this group; these people do not share sincere and friendly relations.

Through his brutality and aggression, the thief creates an atmosphere of fear. The wife cheats on the thief with her lover, and the cook and eventually everyone in the thief’s entourage betray the criminal by siding with his wife.

Peter Greenaway skillfully creates his characters using the spatial construction, showing their personality traits and transformations. Specific spaces are assigned particular colors, and these spaces belong to individual characters. The framing and camera work introduce a theatrical feel, build distance, and skillfully create spaces within the film.