Film Credits

Written and Directed by: Peter Greenway

Starring: Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, Lambert Wilson, Sergio Fantoni, Stephania Cassini, Vanni Corbellini

Review

Although English writer-director Peter Greenway became incredibly popular with American audiences thanks to his wild and controversial The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, I seriously doubt that he'll find any new fans with his earlier The Belly of an Architect. I was prepared to see something unusual and maybe a bit scandalous, but I was instead struck dumfounded as I watched Brian Dennehy spend most of two hours eating and rubbing his stomach. I respect Dennehy as an actor, but geez, I can think of much more pleasant ways of spending the afternoon than seeing Dennehy fondle his belly repeatedly.

Noted American architect Stourley Kracklite (Dennehy) has arrived in Italy to put together an important exhibition honoring Etienne-Louis Boullee, a 19th Century architect nobody seems to have heard of. During the course of his work, Kracklite becomes more and more obsessed with Boulee. He starts having severe bellyaches and ignores his pregnant wife (Chloe Webb) so completely that she shacks up with another guy (Lambert Wilson), who is trying to take complete creative control of the exhibition for his own greedy purposes. Oh, and as you might have gathered by now, Kracklite rubs his belly a lot. That's all fine and dandy, but you're probably wondering what the important hidden message is, right? Well, I was so disenchanted, (no, better make that "bored silly") with the entire proceedings that I couldn't care less what it was all about, and chances are you won't either. To be honest, Dennehy did a fine job with an obviously difficult role and the film seems to have a fine visual style, but Greenaway's story is so incomprehensible and dull that I can't see anyone enjoying this work.

The Belly of an Architect is among the first batch of discs released by Hemdale Home Video, who are newly embracing the laserdisc format. It's always nice to see a new company release product on disc, but Hemdale must understand that laserdisc fans expect high-quality transfers made specifically for disc, not tape. I say this because the disc of The Belly of an Architect resembles a poor-quality videocassette in every respect. The image is on the soft side, it's grainy, the color transfer is such that fleshtones have an orange tint, and (as if that weren't enough), there's a good amount of video noise thrown in as well. It's not the absolute worst disc I've even seen, but it's riding close to the edge... Although shot in a 1.66:1 Spherical Panavision process, the film is cropped on disc. The CX-encoded digital Dolby surround stereo audio tracks are lacking in volume and mixing - the levels are set too low (for my liking, anyway), and with only a couple rare exceptions, the surround channel remains dead silent. The disc was pressed at Sony DADC, is Table of Contents encoded, and contains 13 listed chapter markers. Included within the packaging is a full-color postcard describing Hemdale's other laserdisc releases. It's a shame that I had to complain so much about this transfer, but facts are facts. Hemdale is a new player in the disc market, and one must hope and expect that the quality of their product will improve as they gain a better understand of what laserdiscs are all about.