SOURCE: Quart, Leonard. Review of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, by Peter Greenaway. Cineaste (1990): 45–47.

In the following review, Quart argues that The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is solely “an exercise in style,” and that the film, though aesthetically pleasing, is superficial.

Peter Greenaway is an English director whose films have always aimed at provoking an audience. In the past, excepting the critical success of his first feature, The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), his films have failed to receive commercial distribution in the U.S. With the success of his Jacobean-style, black comic fable, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, his career has been transformed, and the avant-garde director has, for the moment, become part of the mainstream.

What accounts for the success of The Cook … is that, on its surface, the film is a shocking work. It contains a...