following the release of his highly controversial the cook , the thief , his wife & her lover this time last year , the roxy screening rooms in philadelphia presented a retrospective of films by eclectic british film director peter greenaway . included in that retrospective were the art house hit the draughtsman's contract , the film which put greenaway on the map in this country , and two philadelphia premieres -- a zed and two noughts ( which prior to that time had only seen a limited run on the bravo cable channel ) and the belly of an architect . conspicuous by its absence was greenaway's 1988 movie , drowning by numbers , a film which is only now making its much-belated philadelphia debut . this city , it seems , has saved the best until last . drowning by numbers is another visually striking essay by britain's master of the cinematic put-on . brimming with absurdist wordplay and an exacting eye for detail , it's a very tall tale of murder , mathematics , and misdirected love . from the opening scene , you know you are not watching any ordinary film , or dealing with any ordinary filmmaker . a young girl , bedecked in an outrageous , fairy godmother-like party dress , jumps rope whilst reciting the names of the stars in the constellation . the lighting casts giant shadows on the building behind her , an imposing regency edifice fronted by pom-pom-shaped trees . a dead bird hangs from a pole in the foreground . it's like something out of lewis carroll . three generations of women , each named cissie , drown their husbands out of passionate detachment . they are played by joan plowright , juliet stevenson ( who can currently be seen in truly , madly , deeply ) and joely richardson . this maternal camaraderie is incisively drawn , a refreshing change after the misogynistic flourishes of a zed and two noughts . a willing ally to their sanctimonious crimes is a local coroner named madgett ( bernard hill ) . madgett , along with his son , smut ( newcomer jason edwards ) , is an obsessive game-player , much like greenaway himself . in love with all three women , madgett pronounces each death an accident . but greenaway appears to be less concerned with plot than he is with color and composition . the writer/director uses madgett's indulgent preoccupations with contests and counting as an excuse to exercise his own exuberant imagination , layering on the details like oils on a canvas . in fact , many of the sequences in drowning by numbers -- the scenes with the apples , the white beach house against a blackening sky , the angular symmetry of the swimming pool -- are shot with a painter's eye for beauty , like a constable landscape or a ruebens' nude . the numbers 1 to 100 run throughout the film like a chronometer , marking time . they start out obvious enough -- pinned to trees and tin baths , painted on buildings , cows and passers-by -- but wind up being woven into the overall fabric . it's a rich and colorful tapestry , a sumptuously crafted and richly textured experience that is at once wicked , wry and thoroughly entertaining . if drowning by numbers is " about " anything , then it is about the way in which women conspire together , choking the life out of those who have disappointed them sexually , emotionally or otherwise . a darling of the british film institute , peter greenaway made his mark in the late '60s/early '70s with a string of independently produced short films . his big break came in 1982 with the bfi-funded the draughtsman's contract , an erotically charged murder mystery set in 17th century england . but it wasn't until the release of last year's the cook , the thief , his wife & her lover that american audiences were once again treated to the cinematic excesses of this extraordinary talent . in keeping with the film's mood , michael nyman's score is somber and atypically melancholic , not the sawing strings that have punctuated his other collaborations with the director . and sacha vierny's photography is no less exquisite than the picture-postcard perfect views of rome and its surrounding countryside that graced the belly of an architect . the themes which populate most of greenaway's films -- sex , death and decay , puns and punning , religion , numerology , entomology and ornithology -- are also very much in evidence here . in drowning by numbers , greenaway's most accessible film to date , these collective themes add together to form a bizarre jigsaw puzzle with few straight edges , a delineated , looking-glass world in which numbers count for everything and love is often left dead in the water . <hr>| directed by : peter greenaway david n . butterworth - university of pa | | rating : * * * 1/2 internet : <a href= " mailto : butterworth@a1 . mscf . upenn . edu " >butterworth@a1 . mscf . upenn . edu</a> |<hr> 
