Drowning by Numbers [Blu-ray]

Director: Peter Greenaway Peter Greenaway

Overview

Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/30/2023
UPC:	0760137125723
Original Release:	1988
Source:	Severin
Language:	English
Time:	1:59:00
Sales rank:	19,390

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Joan Plowright	Cissie Colpitts 1
Juliet Stevenson	Cissie Colpitts 2
Joely Richardson	Cissie Colpitts 3
Bernard Hill	Madgett
Jason Edwards	Smut
Bryan Pringle	Jake
Trevor Cooper	Hardy
David Morrissey	Bellamy
John Rogan	Gregory
Paul Mooney	Teigan
Jane Gurnett	Nancy
Kenny Ireland	Jonah Bognor
Michael Percival	Moses Bognor
Joanna Dickens	Mrs. Hardy
Janine Duvitski	Martina Bellamy
Michael Fitzgerald	Mr. 70 Van Dyke
Edward Tudor-Pole	Mr. 71 Van Dyke
Natalie Morse	Skipping Girl
Arthur Spreckley	Sid the Gravedigger
Ian Talbot	Police Detective
Roderic Leigh	Policeman
Vanni Corbellini	The Hare
Jose Berg	Skipping Girl's Mother
Sharon Howard-Field	Actor
Michael Nyman	Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway	Director,Screenwriter
Kees Kasander	Producer
Denis Wigman	Producer
Bill Stephens	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Iconoclast Peter Greenaway achieved his biggest crossover success at the time with this tidy, baroque rumination on marriage, deceit, and sisterhood. The result is something of a primer for anyone unfamiliar with Greenaway's work: there is the director's obsession with forms, patterns, and numbers; his fascination with women and sexuality; and his strong taste for all things gruesome, scatological, and macabre, which he insists lurk beneath the veneer of polite Western society. As the three identically named women at the center of the film unapologetically kill their male partners, the film acquires a deadpan, absurdist glee which had been in short supply in Greenaway's previous efforts, and which he would exploit in his next feature, the breakthrough The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Greenaway's penchant for subversive casting results in a welcome comic turn from the legendary Joan Plowright, whose Hollywood career achieved something of a resurgence in the years that followed.

All Movie Guide - Michael Hastings