Drowning by Numbers (Greenaway, 1988): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 2.30pm
This film is part of the Peter Greenaway season at BFI Southbank, and also screens on November 27th. Full details here.
Time Out review:
Obsessed
with obscure English folk games and father to corpse-collecting Smut,
coroner Madgett becomes involved with three generations of women all
named Cissie Colpitts. Unsurprisingly, his amorously optimistic
agreement to keep mum about the aquatic deaths of their husbands lands
him in deep water. Greenaway returns to the playful punning, ludicrous
lists, and quizzical conundrums of his earlier work: opening with a girl
counting a hundred stars, the 'plot' then proceeds with those same
numbers appearing either in the dialogue or in suitably bizarre images.
Equally teasing is the film's complex web of absurdly interlocking
allusions to games, sex and mortality: famous last words, Samson and
Delilah, Breughel, circumcision, etc. Elegantly scored and luminously
shot, it's a modernist black comedy filled with arcane, archaic and
apocryphal lore, and hugely enjoyable.
Geoff Andrew
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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