A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)

I should by rights at the moment be sitting in the Odeon West End watching "The King and the Clown", the first of my London Film Festival selections, but when I got there I found that the screening had been cancelled.  Great, what a way to start the fortnight!  Grrr.  So I'll write instead about this earlyish Peter Greenaway film which I have seen before but which, together with "Drowning by Numbers", I have never quite reckoned sufficiently to consider owning a copy.  So I gave it another go yesterday evening and have not really revised my feelings.  The visuals are brilliant, if often disturbing, but the storyline is so off the wall that it takes a great deal of acceptance.  The film is also hampered by a rather mixed bunch of actors, in particular the French actress Andrea Ferreol in one of the main roles speaking fairly unintelligible English and for some reason Jim Davidson (cor blimey) as a zookeeper.

If you've never seen this movie, be advised that it touches on detached Siamese twins, amputations, and the graphic decaying of flesh.  Brothers Brian and Eric Deacon (not actually twins but growing more alike as the film progresses) take the lead as husbands mourning the death of their wives when the car in which they were being driven is wrecked by a falling swan.  As can happen from time to time!  They are involved with courtesan Frances Barber, the aforementioned frenchwoman who was driving the car, a mysterious double amputee German, and a woman in a red hat straight out of a Vermeer painting.  Much of the film is gorgeous to look at, but other images of rotting animals and snails crawling across bodies does take the edge off any lasting enjoyment.