A Zed & Two Noughts

A Greenaway film set beside a zoo. There is an accident. A swan goes through a car windscreen, the vehicle overturns, and the two women inside are killed. Oliver and Oswald are twin brothers. Both are zoologists at the zoo and the women who died are their wives. One person survives. Alba was at the wheel and loses a leg. The two brothers go to her. First to hold her to account, then for another reason; both begin relationships with her. At the same time they start a study. They record decay: an apple, a prawn, a crocodile, a zebra. Each is filmed in time-lapse. From there the film is a story of obsession. The brothers want to see how death works, and the turn comes inevitably to themselves. Alba's line runs separately. She decides to have her second leg removed as well, and a doctor has a hand in it. What the narrative is interested in is not death but symmetry: the film builds everything in pairs; two brothers, two legs, two animals, two lights. The visual order looks to painting. The framings are built after Vermeer; the light always comes from the left and the characters are arranged as in a canvas. Sacha Vierny was the cinematographer, Michael Nyman wrote the music. Andréa Ferréol, Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Frances Barber and Joss Ackland are in the cast. Peter Greenaway wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes formalist cinema and Greenaway's obsession with order. Who it is not for: anyone disturbed by images of decay; the film shows real animal carcasses breaking down at length.