decay of dead zoo animals. Greenaway displays a preoccupation with numbers and ordering systems inThe Belly of an Architect (1987), which provides an inside look at the workings of the European-American art world. The film's protagonists are two architects—one based on a historical figure, the other purely fictional. The fictional American architect is organizing an exhibition in Rome of the historical architect's works and develops a neurotic fear that he has been poisoned. The film revolves around a numerical structure based on the seven stages of Roman architecture. The Belly of an Architect also examines themes related to art's ability to portray the human form as well as the ethics of reproducing artwork for financial profit. Greenaway's symbol of this practice is a photocopier that spits out images of a human abdomen, which are positioned, grid-like, across a floor. Drowning by Numbers (1988), a mordant study of ritualizing emotion through game-playing, tells the story of a man named Madgett, a coroner, who becomes involved with three murderous women all named Cissie Colpitts. The women bargain with Madgett, who agrees to report the murders that they commit as accidents in exchange for sex. Greenaway once again uses numerical systems to structure the narrative: each of the murders occurs after Madgett and his son Smut play a children's counting game. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, a violent film about decadence, follows an irascible thief and his wife who dine regularly at a restaurant which serves as the central backdrop for the plot. The thief's brutalized wife takes a lover and, after being caught with him and witnessing his horrific murder, starts plotting her own gruesome revenge against her husband. The film features graphic depictions of sex, death, torture, and cannibalism. Greenaway, and a number of reviewers, have commented that the film also functions as an allegory of the politics of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Greenaway later turned his attention to more classical material, capitalizing on high-definition television editing equipment to create the arresting visual imagery in Prospero's Books (1991), a reinterpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The story focuses on the twenty-four books that Prospero took with him on his island exile. Greenaway designed a series of “living” books that appear regularly throughout the narrative. The main plot of The Tempest is reenacted through verse and dance, set against Greenaway's elaborate and lavish sets. In Baby of Mâcon (1993), Greenaway once again embraced controversial subject material with this story of a supposed virgin-birth. The film depicts the human body in a number of strikingly graphic images, and includes a violent rape and scenes of a dead baby being chopped to pieces. Greenaway returned to adaptation with The Pillow Book (1996), a cinematic version of the diary of Sei Shonagon, a tenth-century Japanese courtesan. The film revolves around Nagiko, who, as she comes of age, develops a fascination with having Japanese calligraphy written on her body and with writing on the bodies of her lovers. Over the course of the film, Greenaway intersperses thirteen books of erotic poetry set over several time frames and geographical locations. In 1998, Greenaway teamed with Saskia Boddeke to stage Christophe Colomb, a version of the 1930 opera of the same name by Darius Milhaud. The opera incorporated vocal performances with portions of text that were projected onto a screen onstage. In 1999 Greenaway filmed 8[frac12] Women—a tribute to Federico Fellini's film 8[frac12]—which examines archetypes of male sexual fantasy in Western art.

Critical Reception

Greenaway's dedication to the visual arts and his efforts at redefining cinema—which he calls a “grossly conservative medium”—have prompted mainstream critics to view his work with ambivalence. Although many critics have responded positively to his films' striking visual elements, several have concluded that their content and tightly controlled structure are overly esoteric, self-referential, and inaccessible. A number of reviewers have agreed that there is no easy way to describe a Greenaway film. Even reviewers who have been sympathetic to Greenaway's experiments with the film genre have argued that his work occasionally pushes boundaries solely for the sake of testing the limits of conventional tastes. However, some commentators have embraced Greenaway's filmmaking philosophy and have fully supported his testing of traditional limits. Many reviewers have concurred that Greenaway's films are both disturbing and thought-provoking, displaying a unique and consistent vision developed over nearly three decades of filmmaking.