Review of The Belly of an Architect (1987) by Dimitris S — 04 Sep 2008

Peter Greenaway is an intelligent man. He has been invited to write critical reviews for fine art magazines, has had his work published in academic journals, and has even been invited alongside intellectuals like Derrida and Kristeva to curate a show at the Louvre.

His films are brimming with panache and are often fun and entertaining explorations of a single subject. Greenaway carefully researches his film's material and learns everything there is to know about the subject at hand -- in this case it was the work of architect Etienne-Louis Boullee.

But sometimes he takes himself too seriously and is a tad too ostentatious. He is certainly capable of making a meditative film about architecture, one which articulately ties the phallocentric desire to erect a structure to an obsession with the human physique, no less.

(Contrast the flowing, horizontal, feminine sex scene on the train in the opening shot, where the wife is still happy, to the collapse of the structure (a chair) when the husband's ego is damaged, etc.

) But when Greenaway earnestly includes a scene where his protagonist photocopies a picture of a sculpture's stomach and places it on his own I totally gave up careful analysis and started to laugh at the idea that this was done straight-faced.

This pomposity is recurrent and often borders on the ridiculous as an anecdote should demonstrate: Recently I heard that Greenaway would be speaking at a university half an hour from me. I was initially excited at the prospect of hearing him talk about his subject of the evening, the state of contemporary arts, until I heard how much he saw fit to charge for his 45 minutes: $30.

I was left to wonder if he perhaps had to pay for his own ticket from the UK to Ontario or if, instead, he was taking himself a tad too seriously.