Greenaway's best film, but not for everyone.

fedor8

Probably the best Greenaway film. Ironically, the main reasons for this are the lacking of two of his trademarks; 1) monotonous music, and 2) the camera shooting a mile away from the action and actors (there was comparatively little of that this time around). This film alternates between captivating and boring, the latter being usually the case with sequences involving only music. Once again Greenaway includes extreme gore and brutality into his story. In fact, his films have more of that than 90% of "regular" horror films. In that sense, Greenaway is a horror-film director, but one who dresses his horror with style and elaborate sets. The scene towards the end where Julia Ormond gets raped by hundreds of men in a row is one of the most unforgettable scenes in movie history, through its sheer brutality.

score /10

fedor8 3 January 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1562407/