The Belly of an Architect

A film set in Rome. Stourley Kracklite is an American architect. He comes to Rome to mount an exhibition. The exhibition is about one man. Étienne-Louis Boullée was a French architect of the eighteenth century. He built almost nothing. He only drew; enormous, geometric, impossible structures. Kracklite is obsessed with him. His wife Louisa is with him. She is pregnant. From there the film takes place in Rome. The Pantheon, the Vittoriano, the Forum and museums. The exhibition needs money. The Italian side controls the funding. Caspasian is an architect and the Italian in charge of it. He takes an interest in Louisa. At the same time Kracklite's stomach begins to hurt. After eating, constantly, and steadily worse. He thinks he is being poisoned. He suspects his wife. He goes to a doctor. Then another. What the narrative is interested in is not architecture but a body: its idea is that the man built his life on structures of stone while his own body begins to rot. The belly is at the centre. Kracklite studies the bellies of old statues, photographs them, and writes letters. He writes the letters to Boullée. To a dead man. The exhibition is prepared. Models, drawings and an opening. Kracklite is pushed out by degrees. His authority is taken and the exhibition proceeds without him. The diagnosis comes: cancer. Louisa gives birth. The last scene is at the opening. Peter Greenaway's sense of image is evident. Symmetrical framing, a fixed camera, architectural order and a colour scheme. Every shot is built like a painting. The music is by Wim Mertens. Brian Dennehy plays the part entirely physically. Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, Lambert Wilson and Sergio Fantoni are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Greenaway's cinema and formalist film. Who it is not for: anyone looking for narrative flow; the film moves slowly and the characters are deliberately cold.