Entry Into Lunacy.
A strangely dressed child is skipping and counting the stars by name - up to 100. Move to a drunken, naked couple cavorting inside a house among apples, eventually half-sleeping in separate tin baths full of soupy water, while the man's wife (Joan Plowright) looks on. She enters and drowns her husband, holding his head under three times and counting. You have entered a film that apes insanity. There are three Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson) and during the film, each drowns her respective husband. The coroner in the vicinity (played by a lusty Bernard Hill) covers up the murders after sexual promises.
This unpleasant story takes place in some English backwater, a place where the game of 'catch' suggestively evokes doom, with the ones out lying on a winding sheet, and where cars at night have a funereal quality. There is the ubiquitous yokel with a spade on hand to dig the ground for a grave. It's either all very clever or simply a failed work of art.
Peter Greenaway as director obviously enjoys provoking and mystifying, which can be either intriguing or irritating, depending on the needs of the viewer. Numbers 1 to 100 are manifest throughout the film, but why? Joan Plowright's character is asked why she murdered her husband, and says he was unfailful and stopped washing his feet. Nothing makes real sense, but perhaps Greenaway is making this very point anyway. The viewer will probably ponder the scenes after watching the film, but in the end will likely regret the 118 minutes spent on it.