The Belly of an Architect

Haifa Classics

"The Belly of an Architect is a visual treat, almost an homage to the style of Rome’s architecture"

VARIETY
  • Archive - Festival 39
  • Director: Peter Greenaway
  • United Kingdom, Italy 1987
  • 118 minutes
  • English
  • Subtitles in Hebrew

Stourley Kracklite, a driven, detail-obsessed architect, travels from America to Rome with his much younger wife, Louisa, to oversee an architectural homage to a personal hero, 18th-century master builder Etienne-Louis Boullée. En route by train, Stourley and Louisa conceive a much-wanted child -- but Stourley's obsession with his wife's expanding belly, her perceived infidelity, and his own recurrent bouts of abdominal pain reach epic and dangerous proportions.

The Belly of an Architect shows Peter Greenaway at the height of his powers. Greenaway moves far away from the pastoral, green-filled setting of his early work and instead glides through the austere, vaguely ominous streets of Rome, where towering, crumbling architecture hovers godlike over the people below. Brian Dennehy's towering performance anchors this visually stunning portrait of life and death.

Filmography: Nightwatching (2007), The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2002-4), 8 1/2 Women (1999), The Pillow Book (1996), Prospero's Books (1991), The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989).

 

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  • Director Peter Greenaway
  • Production Colin Callender, Walter Donohue
  • Script Peter Greenaway
  • Cinematography Sacha Vierny
  • Editing John Wilson
  • Music Wim Mertens
  • Actors Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, Lambert Wilson, Sergio Fantoni
  • Source BFI