the draughtman's contract
greenaway is a genius, how did i miss this? this film is blow-up meets dangeorus liasons. i have to watch it again i guess, as i gulped down the wine while watching missing a lot of serious conversations.
posted by irmik @ 9:51 PM
1 Comments:
This very witty and intelligent film is structured on many layers, full of intrigue and double meanings. The style is as a Restoration mystery but it also discusses the value of art and men's attitude to women with some excellent damning put downs of both sexes. The religious, political and social issues of 1694 (the dawn of the Age of Reason) are examined and the chauvinism of the time is expressed by Mrs Talmann (Anne Louise Lambert) who acidly chides her father for cataloging her mother as the least of his assets: `a house, a garden, a horse, a wife, the preferential order'. An arrogant draughtsman (Mr Neville, played with suitable conceit by Anthony Higgins) is commissioned by Mrs Herbert (Janet Suzman) to sketch 12 drawings of her husband's house and gardens in exchange for reluctant sexual favours. The precise orders of the draughtsman are thwarted and misplaced objects start to appear in the etchings, as he is a stickler for detail and will persist in depicting exactly what he sees (`I try very hard never to distort or to dissemble'). Mr Neville soon becomes embroiled in the strange goings on in the garden, and the political and sexual machinations of Mr Herbert's friends and family. abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online abogado online Mr Talmann (a wonderfully priggish Hugh Fraser, unrecognisable as Hastings in ITV's dramatisations of Agatha Christie's Poirot) is persuaded that the drawings are evidence of a physical liaison between his wife and the draughtsman, whilst she illustrates the more sinister interpretation of witness to the murder of her father. Ultimately the women are shown to have had the upper hand and Mr Neville to have been a mere pawn in their schematics, with his fulfilment of their true purpose to sire an heir.
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