hyped garbage

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

You always know going into a Peter Greenaway film that, for better or for worse, you are going to get something a bit left-field. The Belly of an Architect is really no different in this regard. This one tells the tale of an American architect who travels to Rome with his young wife to supervise an exhibition celebrating the 18th century architect Etienne-Louis Boullée. Very soon after arrival both he and his wife experience contrasting activity in their bellies, for him it is severe abdominal pains while she falls pregnant. To complicate matters, they soon begin affairs with other people. The film essentially then details the architects mental deterioration, which includes writing postcards to his long deceased doppelganger Boullée.This one has to go down as one of Greenaway's more accessible films. It has an actual story that is underpinned by a good central performance from Brian Dennehy. But its maybe the very fact that it skirts so close to realistic drama that is one of the main problems, as Greenaway is usually best when he does precisely the opposite. The story is really quite boring and the acting aside from Dennehy not all that good – Chloe Webb being particularly flat as his wife; look out also for Stefania (Suspiria) Cassini sporting an unfamiliar cropped 80's barnet. The visuals, while certainly nicely composed, aren't all that memorable. Given that the setting is Rome, there are many shots of that cities peerless architecture, although that all gets almost a bit travelogue to a certain extent. I think this film, therefore, is one for Greenaway devotees almost exclusively as in order to get a lot out of it you have to be interested in his ideas. While I have liked several of his films, I can't deny that, even in the cases of the ones I liked most, his films can be somewhat annoying. Dennehy really helps draw us in to events though and makes a good stab at involving us but it's difficult to care too much about these stiff characters populating a narrative that is both distant and very cold emotionally. Boullée himself is a typically absurd Greenaway figure, in that very little of his architecture ever came to be built, so it's difficult to ever imagine a high profile retrospective of his work ever happening. His rounded, domed buildings mimic the belly of the title, as does his name. So there are many links and symmetries in the story if you are at all interested in that kind of thing. But, while some of the photography was nice and it did have a good score from one of the members of Kraftwerk, it was overall a little tedious for me.

One of Greenaway's most accessible movies, TBOAA has an actual story-line (unlike the unwatchable "Prospero's Books"), and we actually get to see the faces of the actors (as opposed to "The Cook, The Thief, Some Cannibalism & Plenty Of Shouting from Gambon"). We are fortunately spared Greenaway's trademark set-ups in which all the protagonists are approximately 12 miles away from the camera lens, while rhythmic, monotonous classical music accompanies their every distant move.I didn't find the movie particularly stunning visually, I have no idea what fans of this movie are talking about when they praise the sets and the photography. You can see shots like this in any National Geographic documentary about Ancient Rome or the city's museums and architecture. Greenaway occasionally sets up scenes in an effective way, certainly managing to get the maximum out of the rather thin plot, but there is little here that deserves utterances of "wow!". Let's not get over-excited here, people, just because the movie was made by a man who is considered avant-garde and whom it is hence forbidden to criticize too much (an unwritten rule in the hypothetical "Movie Buff's Guide Of Pretentious European Movies").This is close to a 2-hour movie, and yet very little unfolds. Dennehy predictably gets cheated by his ugly wife, gets ill, has a brief and predictable fling with the sister of the guy who is screwing his wife, and then kills himself at the end. His death coincides with the birth of his child, and we see Boulee's year of death right above his dead body. Frankly, that kind of "symbolism" never gets me too excited. Dennehy's obsession with bellies and Boulee may hold some mysterious grip on Greenaway, and maybe some of his more rabid followers as well, but it doesn't exactly offer anything of significance or even "depth". Tossing historical, architectural, and art references left and right does not a great movie make. Again, I can get all that information on the internet, by watching a documentary, or reading. Not that I was annoyed by that, but it boggles the mind why some film fans wet their pants over this kind of thing.It was predictable that at least one of the main three characters would die at the end. I was even a bit surprised that there wasn't more tragedy happening, with perhaps a scuffle, knives stabbing bellies, people losing their noses, heads rolling into bins... Greenaway never shied away from bombastic conclusions. Suicide, rape, or murder, how else could the movie end? Greenaway was fortunate to have had someone like Dennehy, because quite frankly the rest of the cast was miserably uninteresting and flat.This brings me to my main criticism. Dennehy comes to Italy - not Mars - and yet the behaviour that he encounters is that of a bunch of very rude, stone-faced, evil Romans that seem to have been shipped straight from planet Greenaway to our little Earth. Whether the director has something concrete against the Italian people, or whether he was just being typically "weird" in the worst European-cinema tradition, I don't know. The interaction between the American guest and the Italians is usually illogical, sometimes strange, and often just plain silly. An example of the latter would be the way Dennehy punches some brash young Italians on two occasions. If you wanna be "weeeeeird", then be weird all the way, instead of creating a movie that remains undecided whether it wants to be realistic or all-out experimental.

I only can say that Brian Dennehy is not the typical Greenaway actor, but Greenaway gets to work with him in order to take him to the summit of his work. It is over the fat policeman bored of what he does, alcoholic, disenchanted... Here, the American Architect, his wife, the exhibition, the Italian rival, everything is planned, and Greenway's work with actors gets the best performance Brian could ever have dreamt about. Besides, Peter Greenaway has made his masterpiece with this film in my opinion. I saw it for the first time when I was 16 (now, I'm 33) and I got truly impressed, thinking it was the best movie I had seen in my whole life. That is not much to say. Now, at 33, every time I see it I think the very same thing. Enjoy Greenaway's masterpiece!

This is possibly the most painful and yet bland love-drama I've seen. It's also a film about clashes between cultures. Why? you ask. (SPOILERS)Well, in the beginning, when we see the happy couple making love on the train, everything is so relaxed and comfortable. Then they arrive in Rome, Italy. And ever so slowly, the Italian sun-beaten culture with a whole different set of values, start creeping in.At first, both "Senior Cracklite" and his wife are met with great respect as if they were both filmstars or something. And then they start interacting with Italian people, eating late, beginning to get sluggish by the everyday heat, being hit by the ever-present "yada-yada" of the Italian language (it's a beautiful language, but still "yada-yada"), etc. And then Louisa meets the ever-smiling and charming Italian men, who takes her by storm. Mr. Cracklite is so immersed in his job that it's hard not to see where this is going.And so, it goes the way we all fear. And I could really feel a strange recognition in this. Not that I've been in Italy and have experienced this first-hand, but I've traveled to other countries in southern Europe, and seen/listened to this almost invisible world of "alcoholic fumes", generated by a culture raised on wine instead of milk, siestas instead of lunch-breaks, the double standard of the unmarried woman being protected to the death and the brutal male shovinistic tradition of 'hitting on' married women instead.And Mr. Cracklite is a sitting duck for this kind of 'ambush' on his relationship with his wife. Just as she is. Because they are the products of a more western view of peoples conduct. Not to say that infidelity is any less a product of our culture as well. I myself is from Sweden, and I recognize more in the way that the Cracklite's reactions than the Italian's. Also, the absolutely wonderful photo stresses this love-crisis even more. The immaculate Italian architecture, reeking of history and centuries past, the great heritage from thousands of generations of poets, musicians, statesmen, the whole civilized culture of the Romans only accentuates the feelings of estrangement between Mr. Cracklite and his wife, and between his visit to this 'alien culture' and his own distant home.And that is what ends his part in this story. But not his ex-wife's.Oh... Those women and that love. Never absolutely trustworthy. I give this film an 8 out of 10.Dracopticon out.