I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

You always know going into a Peter Greenaway film that, for better or for worse, you are going to get something a bit left-field. The Belly of an Architect is really no different in this regard. This one tells the tale of an American architect who travels to Rome with his young wife to supervise an exhibition celebrating the 18th century architect Etienne-Louis Boullée. Very soon after arrival both he and his wife experience contrasting activity in their bellies, for him it is severe abdominal pains while she falls pregnant. To complicate matters, they soon begin affairs with other people. The film essentially then details the architects mental deterioration, which includes writing postcards to his long deceased doppelganger Boullée.This one has to go down as one of Greenaway's more accessible films. It has an actual story that is underpinned by a good central performance from Brian Dennehy. But its maybe the very fact that it skirts so close to realistic drama that is one of the main problems, as Greenaway is usually best when he does precisely the opposite. The story is really quite boring and the acting aside from Dennehy not all that good – Chloe Webb being particularly flat as his wife; look out also for Stefania (Suspiria) Cassini sporting an unfamiliar cropped 80's barnet. The visuals, while certainly nicely composed, aren't all that memorable. Given that the setting is Rome, there are many shots of that cities peerless architecture, although that all gets almost a bit travelogue to a certain extent. I think this film, therefore, is one for Greenaway devotees almost exclusively as in order to get a lot out of it you have to be interested in his ideas. While I have liked several of his films, I can't deny that, even in the cases of the ones I liked most, his films can be somewhat annoying. Dennehy really helps draw us in to events though and makes a good stab at involving us but it's difficult to care too much about these stiff characters populating a narrative that is both distant and very cold emotionally. Boullée himself is a typically absurd Greenaway figure, in that very little of his architecture ever came to be built, so it's difficult to ever imagine a high profile retrospective of his work ever happening. His rounded, domed buildings mimic the belly of the title, as does his name. So there are many links and symmetries in the story if you are at all interested in that kind of thing. But, while some of the photography was nice and it did have a good score from one of the members of Kraftwerk, it was overall a little tedious for me.

Perhaps it is a mid-life crisis and a fear of death that simultaneously hits Chicago architect Stourley Kracklite (Brian Dennehy). He has traveled to Rome to present an elaborate tribute to the French architect Louis Boullee. Kracklite is fifty-four years old, uncertain that he has fulfilled the promise of his youth. He is married to a woman (Chloe Webb) young enough to be his daughter. So when he begins to develop stomach pains (perhaps due to a growing stomach tumor) while working in Rome and gets no satisfaction from doctors, he begins to believe his wife is poisoning him. Furthermore it appears that she is having an affair with an Italian architect named Caspasian (Lambert Wilson) who also desires to take over Kracklite's Boullee project. I think a lot of men in their fifties can identify with these sorts of threats to their well-being and perhaps be unable to tell the real from the unreal.So the human belly is a big deal in this film. At one point Kracklite prints out scores of photocopies of the belly of a Roman statue as if in scrutinizing mass copies of a flat belly he might somehow explain why he is in pain. Or perhaps the flat belly symbolizes his lost youth and the insecure feeling he has about the affection and faithfulness of Louisa, his young wife. Maybe it is even the case that the belly is a euphemistic symbol of something else that is no longer as vital as it once was. When men in their fifties worry about such things they also worry about their ability not just to cut the mustard but the quality of their work. In short, they worry about being superseded. One cannot help but feel in this case that Kracklite's growing paranoia is in part responsible for his declining power. Fear of something may give it strength.As for the way cinematic auteur Peter Greenaway directs this film, I think his intent is to let the film reflect the subject matter in the sense that both are of artistic intent rather than the movie being a commercial enterprise. (That is perhaps an understatement.) He shows the beauty of the architectural ruins of Rome. He thinks in terms of tableaux in wide shots. He picks a backdrop and sets the camera at some distance from the backdrop: Italian ruins, a spacious lobby, expansive steps in front of an impressive building. And then he plays the scene. Unlike most modern directors he mostly eschews close-ups. I'd rather he didn't. The effect is like being in a theater watching a play. There is a certain appropriateness I suppose about this technique since it creates in the viewer a feeling of spying, which is exactly what Kracklite finds himself doing in one scene, looking through a keyhole to see what his wife and Capasian are doing; and Greenaway has us see too, at the same distance.In another sense, there is a studied feel to this movie that suggests something a bit cold like marble which again is appropriate. Yet Brian Dennehy, in an intense, engaging performance, makes us feel for him and his predicament. We understand that he is realizing his mortality and we appreciate that his reaction is understandably confused and frightened. As for his wife, she seems distant not only because of the camera work but perhaps because she is psychologically estranged from her husband and from what he is going through.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Starring Brian Dennehy, an unusual actor for a Peter Greenaway film, as Kracklite, an architect, a career we don't often see explored in cinema, Greenaway's 'Belly of an Architect' is somehow bigger and more emotionally ambitious than most of his other works, which lack human resonance. In his other films, the characters are uniformly British and so Greenaway's coldness and archness toward them is indicative of a general misanthropy. Here, it's aimed squarely at Romans, whose loose morals and carnivorous practices contrast with the enormity of Kracklite's ego and generosity of spirit. His stomach is being eaten away by some unknown illness or cancer, and this serves as a metaphor for his ego being eaten away by the carnivorousness of Roman culture. His wife, his identity (which is a vicarious one, given his devotion/debt to his idol, Bouleé) and his work are being repossessed by the conquestful Roman carnivores who aim to destroy him simply for the material gain of taking what is so ostentatiously his. But his devotion to Bouleé, his need to make Bouleé's work more widely known, is not a singular or altruistic act; the exhibition he is organizing will make Bouleé more commercial and accessible, but it will also be an addendum to his own career, a manifestation of his ego. His diary is written in the form of letters to Bouleé, to whom he is almost praying as his own personal God. And his devotion to this God is not a selfless one, since Bouleé is so inexorably an element of his own identity.Rome and its buildings are given a golden, postmodern glow, their clarity enhanced by Wim Mertens' musical score, which adds its own sunlight to the proceedings. But the sunlight that glows throughout Rome and permeates the aura of the film is an impersonal one, an indifferent one, as ancient as the ruins of Rome, which our Roman characters observe have been more useful and influential as ruins than they were prior. "They're better as ruines," a character observes. "Your imagination compensates for what you don't see, like a woman with clothes on." The Romans are depicted here as carnivores (and the word "carnivore" is used multiple times) who not only want to devour and repossess, but want to strip. Brian Dennehy's performance here is indeed stripped, larger than life, fiery. He explodes on screen, bringing the film into another realm, introducing emotional dimensions not often seen in the films of Greenaway; and in this, the film has a power that inhabits the movie's symmetrical form (mostly every shot is symmetrical), its architecture, and threatens to destroy it. The coldness that is typical of Greenaway, that architecturized godlessness, is at war with fiery human passion in all its flawed nakedness.Greenaway's movies, in their arctic wit and obsession with symmetry, are cinema as architecture more so than storytelling, so 'The Belly of an Architect,' contrary to the claim by many that it's his most mainstream and therefore weakest work, is perhaps his most appropriate film, and maybe his best

Brian, except for the belly part, seemed to have exactly the opposite type of personality and physiognomy to play the central character. He had a big project to complete (beautiful architecture photography, by the way). His marriage and body are falling apart and he barely cracks a wrinkle.This may have been part of Greenaway's strategy of casting characters against obvious type (or maybe Brian was the largest major actor available). But this time it comes off as neither comedy or tragedy.Don't let this lapse by Greenaway turn you off to his other weirdness.