SOURCE: Moore, Suzanne. “Filming by Numbers.” New Statesman & Society 1, no. 14 (9 September 1988): 48–49.

In the following review, Moore examines Greenaway's preoccupation with order in Drowning by Numbers and criticizes his stereotypical characters.

Peter Greenaway is a clever, cultured man who makes clever, cultured films. So clever, in fact, he managed to get a special programme on Channel 4 just to explain his latest effort. Fear of Drowning is both a guide to, and an analysis of, Drowning by Numbers. In it he sounds like a man with a plan, someone with a trick or two up their sleeve: precious, pretentious and profound—rather like his films.

There is by now an almost standard set of critical responses to his work and he is respected as an arty and inventive filmmaker even by those who regard him as too clever for his own good. The argument goes something like this: his earlier...