Drowning by Numbers

Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- ...more

Iconoclast Peter Greenaway achieved his biggest crossover success at the time with this tidy, baroque rumination on marriage, deceit, and sisterhood. The result is something of a primer for anyone unfamiliar with Greenaway's work: there is the director's obsession with forms, patterns, and numbers; his fascination with women and sexuality; and his strong taste for all things gruesome, scatological, and macabre, which he insists lurk beneath the veneer of polite Western society. As the three ...more