Brian Dennehy stars as American architect Stourley Kracklit, who comes to Rome to open a show on the visionary French architect, Boullee, with pregnant wife Louisa (played by Chloe Webb, with a very affected voice, I thought) in tow. The Etienne-Louis Boullee (1728-1799) angle to this story is very interesting and worth watching if only to better understand how, like Michangelo and Da Vinci, far ahead of his time this man was.
Once in Rome, things go sour quickly as Kracklit starts thinking his wife is poisoning him (with figs), starts (rightly) imagining Louisa is having an affair with a lead architect on the project, Caspasin Speckler (played by Lambert Wilson), begins obsessing on all things Boullee (including writing postcards to the long dead architect), and photocopying any picture of a stomach he can find. True to anything done by Peter Greenaway, The Belly of an Architect has ravishing shots that are utterly theatrical in their construction, a perfect music score, and an interestingly woven story pulled off by Dennehy's fine performance. Granted, the shots of Rome's architect and the attention to detail sure help too. While it all ends poorly with a cancer-riddened Kracklit dropping in (in a manner of speaking) on the premier of the show he's been maneuvred out of orchestrating, it is a satisfying 2 hour visual journey.
My rating 7 out of 10.
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