Drowning By Numbers (1988)

Drowning By Numbers (1988) (DVD) (*)

$24.99

Screened, competed or awarded at:
Cannes Film Festival
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
German ( Mono )
German ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Germany ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
118 min

Aspect Ratio:
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.66:1)

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Trailer(s)
Booklet

Movie filmed in 1988 and produced in:
Netherlands ( France, Benelux )
United Kingdom ( Great Britain, Ireland )

Directed By:
Peter Greenaway

Written By:
Peter Greenaway

Actors:
Joan Plowright ..... Cissie Colpitts 1
Juliet Stevenson ..... Cissie Colpitts 2
Joely Richardson ..... Cissie Colpitts 3
Bernard Hill ..... Madgett
Jason Edwards ..... Smut
Bryan Pringle ..... Jake
Trevor Cooper ..... Hardy
David Morrissey ..... Bellamy
John Rogan ..... Gregory
Paul Mooney ..... Teigan
Jane Gurnett ..... Nancy
Kenny Ireland ..... Jonah Bognor
Michael Percival ..... Moses Bognor
Joanna Dickens ..... Mrs. Hardy
Janine Duvitski ..... Marina Bellamy

Synopsis:

Tired of her husband's philanderous ways, the mother of two daughters drowns her husband. With the reluctant help of the local coroner, the murder is obscured. Her daughters are having similar problems with relationships, and tend to follow their mother's example, and the coroner becomes reluctantly duplicitous. As the plot progresses, visual and spoken numbers appear in the scenes, counting from one to 100.

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) - have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

The film's plot centres on three married women - a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece - each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 24 February, 2020.