SOURCE: Jenkins, Alan. “Rutting and Rotting.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4518 (3 November 1989): 1212.

In the following mixed review of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, Jenkins argues that the character of the “Thief” is neither believable nor original.

“The naughty bits and the dirty bits are very close together,” blurts Albert Spica, the villain of this piece, a few minutes into it; and thereafter we are seldom allowed to forget how much eating owes to death and sex to food, and how all flesh bears the taint of corruption.

Peter Greenaway's rich, dark fantasy, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, opens with the despicable Spica, a gangster of sorts, forcing someone literally to eat shit; and for the rest of the film that is what, metaphorically, he does to one and all. We are what we eat, we turn everything we eat to shit...