Media ratings

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

♥♥♥

Closer to 2 than 4.

Made like it's a play.

Spectacular visuals - cinematography, set designs and costumes, I'll give it that. Kinda like a Wes Anderson-film in that way. Or Kubrick, in which case I guess it'd be most similar to A Clockwork Orange.

That's where the similarities, end, though, because it's a pretty boring, repetitive story and uninspired writing. And a matching repetitive but fairly good soundtrack. Acting is nothing special.

There's incessant speciesism up front almost constantly, with it's focus on what's still considered food in this age. On top of that there's a ton violence towards human animals too, sexism, nudity and sex. Don't know if it's supposed to be edgy decadence to catch attention or what. Maybe, optimistically, it's partially trying to show the obvious relationship between inter-human-animal violence and violence towards other animals.

The repetitive nature of it does make it somewhat hypnotic, though. Admittedly I was also somewhat agitated while watching it, so maybe I missed some actually interesting symbolism or something.

Was about to say that maybe child safety wasn't taken seriously enough in terms of what they're exposed to, but apparently fx. the child-like looking singer was around 25(?!) according to IMDB, which says he was born in 1963. Wtf?!