The play’s the thing: Peter Greenaway’s Goltzius and the Pelican Company

Critics and audiences may have long given up on British painter-turned-director Peter Greenaway, but his sensuous, smart, arty films are asking questions few others would dare to contemplate.

By Ryan Gilbey

(Photo By "It was meant to be an acted metaphor. It became a bloody reality": Goltzius and the Pelican Company.)

Goltzius and the Pelican Company (18)
dir: Peter Greenaway

If one were called on to explain to a young cinemagoer now the position in the 1980s of the British painter-turned-director Peter Greenaway, it might be helpful to say that he combined the intellectual mischief of Slavoj Žižek, the formalist precision of Wes Anderson, the provocations of Lady Gaga and the commercial appeal of chlamydia.