this helps, if you ask yourself how cinema is different as a medium than, say, storytelling

Don't try to "get" it, just take it in and enjoy.

Perfect. I'm pretty sure even before i got into this ultra-deadpan/artificial style i would have found this really entertaining. A lot more accessible and easy to watch than other Greenaway, with just as much of what i love about him.

"None of Greenaway's films take place in anything resembling naturalism or realism, and they don't feel modern. They're like archaic storybook adaptations of Jacobean plays illustrated by Vermeer." - Jeremiah Kipp

Overladen with enough pretentious mise en scene to undermine any substance, which reduces this film to drag along its feet (which I imagine are sporting sparkling platform shoes with fish inside them). Metaphors and symbolism are nice to see in films, but this film is a metaphor in and of itself, which is ridiculous since it gives this film no double meaning; its caked in a supposedly symbolic style.

This is what I call art!

"A very memorable, strange, intellectual and elegantly humorous visual essay."

This is a rich, lush and difficult puzzle of a film is rewarding. Has distrubing overtones of J.G Ballard for me. The Nyman soundtrack is one of my favourites.

Greenaway has created a slimy, gross, unpleasantly off-kilter world. His characters speak and act in peculiar, baser ways, living out unusual desires without hesitation. I don't want to live in this world, but it's absolutely fascinating to watch. The vibrant colors; the pervasive symbolism; the symmetrical compositions; the fluid, unflinching camera; the remarkable music: these things are all spices that enhance the disturbing and amazing flavor of this unique film.

Oddly disturbing.

A bizarre but beautifully filmed tale from Greenaway.

This is probably my favorite Greenaway film.

Classic Greenaway: dense symbolism, double meanings, fringe intellectual pursuits, outrageous coincidences, bizarre names, art history, the alphabet, taxonomy, anecdotal storytelling, self-reference, and painstaking compositions. The cinematography is gorgeous. The film is just loaded with marvelous little details, plenty of sly wit, and food for thought. Like a lot of Greenaway, it's a rather cold and clinical film, but under the icy facade are some good human insights.

Although it is many, many years since I saw this, my clear recollection is that the pretension was not redeemed by any discernible interesting ideas.

wow

Bizarre, unpleasant, but beautifully photographed (by Sacha Vierny) oddity.

Sorry Greenaway, I didn't get it. Will try again in a few years.

A film with the central metaphor of amputation and decomposition, which is about the relation of two brothers and a woman, which isn't apologetic for any of it for even a moment. Now that is Greenawayish. I just gave myself to the compositional beauty of it and the wonderful Nyman accompanying. Opening five minutes is hardcore cinema. Rest is...more like an extension.

Life: it ends "with a swan and a white car, Ford Mercury, registration number NID 26BW, driven by a woman with flaming red hair surrounded by white feathers called Alba Bewick." Greenaway is a bit too eccentric, a bit too obscure but definitely worth watching. Special flavor.

"On a par with anything by David Lynch for sheer surrealistic verve."