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Poster for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Lust...Murder...Dessert. Bon Appetit!

1989 · 2h 4m · X Crime, Drama
Directed by Peter Greenaway

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Overview

The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
85%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Albert is one of the ugliest characters ever brought to the screen. Ignorant, over-bearing and violent, it's a gloriously rich performance by Gambon.

Variety Staff, Variety
Rotten

For a Jacobean-style drama about deadly emotions, the film lacks passion; only in the final half-hour, with Michael Nyman's funereal music supplying a welcome gravity, does it at last exert a stately power.

Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Fresh

A work so intelligent and powerful that it evokes our best emotions and least civil impulses, so esthetically brilliant that it expands the boundaries of film itself.

Caryn James, New York Times
Fresh

It doesn't simply make a show of being uncompromising -- it is uncompromised in every single shot from beginning to end.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh

Greenaway, the bemused, coolly ironic truth-teller, has painted a cruel portrait for a cruel time.

Hal Hinson, Washington Post

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