Whatever you've been reading about The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, it certainly doesn't deserve the publicity it's been getting. It is all style and no substance, with one scene of unending horror after another, ostensibly in the name of art rather than sadism. Yet these scenes of psychological and physical torture don't serve any greater artistic message, merely shocking the viewer without explaining anything about human nature, society, or violence.

Director Peter Greenaway sets his "modern day fable" in a French restaurant overripe with wealthy patrons and rare edibles. The sets are richly textured, with much of the action taking place in surrealistic rooms elaborately adorned. The kitchen workers artfully slice and stir, bustling among the slabs of meat and piles of vegetables. Since there is no insightful dialogue to give the film substance, Greenaway depends on this visual splendor to carry it along. The images are so impressive, in fact, that that you may have trouble getting them out of your mind. Since most of the scenes are of grotesque desecrations, one begins to wish that the cinematography weren't so memorable. One of many examples is the mutilation of a man in a room bathed in beautiful yellow light. As the henchmen stuff paper down the dying man's throat, the camera angle is nicely shot from below the man's feet, so we can clearly see the man's internal organs bulging out from his chest. It's a shame that Sacha Vierney's camera is put to these uses.

The tale is a simple one. The Thief (played by Michael Gambon) has lots of money and no class. He is pure evil itself--two unrelenting hours of it. His evenings are spent in the restaurant with his abused wife (Helen Mirren) and his henchmen. In the course of the movie they terrorize the other patrons for sport, eat the haute cuisine with their fingers, and generally spit on the trappings of western culture. The Wife, trapped in a humiliating and empty marriage, is drawn to her future lover (Alan Howard) as he sits reading (heavy symbolism) in the restaurant. They furtively couple on subsequent nights as her oblivious husband raves on in the dining room. As is obvious from the start, there must be retribution for this stolen pleasure, and it's just a question of how horrible it will be.

If these characters actually revealed something about human nature, we might forgive them for their excesses. Yet they remain opaque and two-dimensional. Why, for example, does the intelligent, worldly, and beautiful Wife put up with such brutality, humiliated and controlled by her husband at every turn? We are given nothing to explain it. What would cause the Thief to be so evil, lacking in every human quality? How can we be moved by such characters? And what is the point of watching unending violence if we don't know its source or remedy? Such evil is shocking, yes, nauseating, yes. But since it's also inexplicable, it doesn't shed any light on the evil within us.

Because this movie is undated (in order to avoid an X) and is being promoted by a picture of a woman in black lace, you might think there is some titillating sex in this film. Think again. Greenaway appears to have an aversion to sex-the scenes of hurried lovemaking take place in the ladies' stall and the kitchen pantries among plucked chickens, with the fear of discovery overshadowing any possibility for eroticism. Since that discovery will inevitably lead to torture, mutilation, and death, their sexual encounters are stomach-wrenching more than anything. When the lovers are eventually forced to flee from the raging husband, they are ushered into the deep freezer, their passions considerably cooled. Rescued soon after, they are hidden in a van full of rotting meat and putrid pigs' heads, the filth covering their bodies. The sexual horrors continue throughout the film, leaving no human pleasure untainted.

What were the actors thinking when they agreed to do this film? They get to gurgle convincingly from the blood, paper, and other objects clogging their throats. But as for dialogue, it's not Greenaway's strong suit. These characters simply can't communicate. The one scene in which two people (the Wife and the Cook) actually talk to each other is wooden and superficial.

Even Greenaway's artistic and intellectual pretensions are laughable. One example is his use of color. All the rooms in the film are color-coded, so the costumes of the characters change as they move from one room to another. He says that "I wanted to make color structural and not merely decorative, to use it in a metaphorical sense." This is all very playful and interesting, but what are these colors supposed to symbolize? Fortunately for us, the director has explained the symbols in his interviews. The blood red in the dining room represents danger--but since there's violence in every room, it's not clear why this one is red, and the others aren't. The kitchen is jungle-green, suggesting safety (a lot of people get pummeled in the kitchen too, so it can't be too safe). The parking lot is a cold blue, connoting the netherworld. The children's hospital ward is the yellow of egg yolk and spring (although there's nothing spring-like about seeing a young boy tortured there.) The bathrooms, where the lovers begin their affair, are the "shadowless incandescent walls of heaven." Coming from a director with an obsession with feces and urine, this must be the height of irony. There's nothing heavenly about the beatings and other activities that go on in these bathrooms. Greenaway's attempt at using colors metaphorically is, in short, a complete joke.

If Greenaway had something to say, it might justify desecrating western culture, sexual passion, and youthful innocence. But he doesn't. Your time and money are better spent elsewhere.