Despite the ridiculously interesting title, "TBOAA" is a tiring and incomprehensible film: it's two hours long, there are very few close-ups and its pacing is desperately slow in the first part. It builds up during the last half but never becomes better than just decent. Much they did about nothing. I mean, OK, Dennehy is great and the score by Wim Mertens is absolutely excellent (especially the song "Struggle For Pleasure") but these are the only two sensible reasons one would watch this.

Obviously beautiful, and chained to it's own symbolism and symmetry.

It's odd watching a Greenaway film with a score by someone other than Michael Nyman, but I actually enjoyed Wim Mertens' music in this film. The film itself is good in the usual encyclopeadic-Greenaway fashion, but it is not Greenaway's best.

Not among Greenaway's best, but not bad. The worst you can say about it is that it isn't nearly as dense as Greenaway's finest work, and seems rather one-note throughout much of it. But there are intriguing elements, particularly in the repeated references to the compartmentalization of the body. And Dennehy is quite good. Vierny's photography is glorious as always, again highlighting Greenaway's love of symmetry and voluminous detail. Chloe Webb is awful, though.