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Drowning by Numbers, 1988
Cissie (Joan Plowright) comes home unexpectedly one evening to find her husband drunk, naked, and philandering with a local woman and impulsively drowns him in the bathtub. Her actions are covered up by the local coroner, Madgett (Bernard Hill), who has feelings for Cissie. But soon Cissie’s actions trickle down into the lives of her daughter, Cissie (Juliet Stevenson), and her niece, Cissie (Joely Richardson). Also impacted is Madgett’s son, Smut (Jason Edwards), an odd but sensitive boy.
Enlivened by quirky touches, this is a fun and fantastical variation on a classic murder caper.
(NOTE: I will be mentioning events that happen in the middle and toward the end of this film. Those events are included in basically every plot summary I’ve read of this movie, so I’m not going to put the whole review in spoiler text, but I’d recommend watching the movie before reading reviews of it.)
It’s very tempting to center a conversation about this film around the fantastical, stylistic, or whimsical elements. And I will certainly talk about those later. But despite the elements that might signal cutesiness, there is a real dark, somber streak to this film that neatly flips the typical beats and sensibility of this kind of story.
The first murder, committed by Plowright’s character, is the most stylized in terms of presentation. Cissie’s drunk husband and the woman he’s having an affair with are each in bathtubs, surrounded by a surreal number of apples from the family’s orchard. As the two drunkenly slosh around in their washbin-style tubs, Cissie enters the house and then drowns her husband. Drunk and already asleep, he dies with basically no protest or fuss. It’s, for lack of a better word, the kind of murder we see in “light” crime films---bloodless and minimizing the suffering of the victim.
But as the film progresses through later murders, the reasons for those killings become less “excusable”, and their circumstances become more and more cruel. While being angry about infidelity is the kind of offense that, as a viewer, we can sort of excuse when it comes to a protagonist we like, this is not the situation with the later deaths. Stevenson’s Cissie decides to let her husband drown in the ocean after he mocks her regarding not wanting to have sex with her, choosing instead to focus on his typewriter. Her husband, Hardy (Trevor Cooper), seems like a jerk, but does he deserve to die? And especially while someone watches on, knowing he needs help?
By the time we get to Richardson’s Cissie, the drowning becomes downright sickening and sadistic. Cissie and her fiance, Bellamy (David Morrissey), are very much in love and can’t keep their hands off of each other. But Cissie just decides . . . maybe one day she’ll get bored of him? This motivation alone is shallow enough to be totally unsympathetic, but it’s the way that Bellamy dies that is incredibly upsetting. He doesn’t really know how to swim, and so Cissie offers to teach him in a local pool. He nervously treads water, barely buoyed by a floatation belt. Cissie removes the belt and simply lets him drown. Watching a character who is fearful and harmless be so cruelly betrayed by the person he loves and trusts most is detestable. It completely undercuts the “fun” murder story we’re presented with in the first act.
There’s a lot to unpack in terms of what the film is subverting. There are a lot of movies where men or women kill off an unlikable spouse/partner, often where we are expected to root for the character who does the killing. This film takes an offense that a lot of viewers would sympathize with---infidelity--to get us on the side of the main characters. But this film slowly walks back the “crime” of the offending spouse, until the only thing a victim is guilty of is something the killer imagines might happen in the future. As someone who reads a lot of mysteries in which characters “get what was coming to them”, this gave me some food for thought.
There’s also some interesting undermining of cutesy trappings. I happen to really enjoy Wes Anderson’s style, but think about the stereotypes about his style. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in this film. Smut has a crush on a girl (Natalie Morse), who spends her evenings dressed in a gaudy princess dress, skipping rope, and counting/naming the stars. Smut’s crush on the girl seems like it would merely function as an innocent foil to the corrupted “love” between the Cissie’s and their male partners. But this subplot goes to some really dark places, including several moments of Smut committing acts of self-harm centered on his feelings for the young woman. One of the tragedies of the film is that Madgett, Smut’s father, is so distracted by the shenanigans with the Cissies that he’s missing a ton of warning signs regarding the mental and physical wellbeing of his own child.
Madgett is an interesting character, especially when contrasted with his own son. Madgett is in love with all of the Cissies. He continues to help cover for their crimes, hoping for an emotional or sexual connection with one or more of them. It’s a fundamental betrayal of his legal and ethical obligations. As Madgett commits crimes in the hope of favors, Smut attentively documents every death in the county, including roadkill and dead insects.
Now, about those trappings. While it’s true that I mainly enjoyed them for the contrast they created with the dark turns of the plot, there is plenty of pleasure to be taken in them as stylistic elements. The most obvious one is the numbers. As per the title, the numbers 1 through 100 appear in the film in various ways, through the film. It becomes a gruesome “I Spy” game as half of you watches a murder while the other half scans the frame for an elusive 72. There are also a litany of touches like imaginary games that the characters play--I’d never have the nerve to play Reverse Strip Jump, both because of the heights and the nudity, but Dawn Card Castles seems cool---or the odd design and decor of Smut and Madgett’s respective bedrooms.
Outside of the quirky stuff, the film also contains some excellent visuals. This film has that kind of look that’s both lavish and sort of grimy? The opening sequence with the bathtubs and the apples really exemplifies this. Probably the highlight of the film’s visuals is the final sequence between Cissie and Bellamy. Shot mainly from inside the water and from the side, we watch the characters in profile, their conversation above water a contrast to the actions of their bodies below the surface. Additionally, you know that I always have to give props to a film that shows equity in its use of nudity and gaze. I really like the style of nudity that you get in this film, where it is casual or incidental, fitting with the sexual intimacy between the characters and showing how something as intimate as being naked around another person can swing from feeling powerful to powerless based on the reaction of that person.
I had no complaints about this film. It’s been on my to-see list for something like 20 years, and it did not disappoint. My main experience with Greenaway’s films was when I was in my late teens/early 20s, and watching this film makes me very interested in revisiting those movies.
Drowning by Numbers, 1988
Cissie (Joan Plowright) comes home unexpectedly one evening to find her husband drunk, naked, and philandering with a local woman and impulsively drowns him in the bathtub. Her actions are covered up by the local coroner, Madgett (Bernard Hill), who has feelings for Cissie. But soon Cissie’s actions trickle down into the lives of her daughter, Cissie (Juliet Stevenson), and her niece, Cissie (Joely Richardson). Also impacted is Madgett’s son, Smut (Jason Edwards), an odd but sensitive boy.
Enlivened by quirky touches, this is a fun and fantastical variation on a classic murder caper.
(NOTE: I will be mentioning events that happen in the middle and toward the end of this film. Those events are included in basically every plot summary I’ve read of this movie, so I’m not going to put the whole review in spoiler text, but I’d recommend watching the movie before reading reviews of it.)
It’s very tempting to center a conversation about this film around the fantastical, stylistic, or whimsical elements. And I will certainly talk about those later. But despite the elements that might signal cutesiness, there is a real dark, somber streak to this film that neatly flips the typical beats and sensibility of this kind of story.
The first murder, committed by Plowright’s character, is the most stylized in terms of presentation. Cissie’s drunk husband and the woman he’s having an affair with are each in bathtubs, surrounded by a surreal number of apples from the family’s orchard. As the two drunkenly slosh around in their washbin-style tubs, Cissie enters the house and then drowns her husband. Drunk and already asleep, he dies with basically no protest or fuss. It’s, for lack of a better word, the kind of murder we see in “light” crime films---bloodless and minimizing the suffering of the victim.
But as the film progresses through later murders, the reasons for those killings become less “excusable”, and their circumstances become more and more cruel. While being angry about infidelity is the kind of offense that, as a viewer, we can sort of excuse when it comes to a protagonist we like, this is not the situation with the later deaths. Stevenson’s Cissie decides to let her husband drown in the ocean after he mocks her regarding not wanting to have sex with her, choosing instead to focus on his typewriter. Her husband, Hardy (Trevor Cooper), seems like a jerk, but does he deserve to die? And especially while someone watches on, knowing he needs help?
By the time we get to Richardson’s Cissie, the drowning becomes downright sickening and sadistic. Cissie and her fiance, Bellamy (David Morrissey), are very much in love and can’t keep their hands off of each other. But Cissie just decides . . . maybe one day she’ll get bored of him? This motivation alone is shallow enough to be totally unsympathetic, but it’s the way that Bellamy dies that is incredibly upsetting. He doesn’t really know how to swim, and so Cissie offers to teach him in a local pool. He nervously treads water, barely buoyed by a floatation belt. Cissie removes the belt and simply lets him drown. Watching a character who is fearful and harmless be so cruelly betrayed by the person he loves and trusts most is detestable. It completely undercuts the “fun” murder story we’re presented with in the first act.
There’s a lot to unpack in terms of what the film is subverting. There are a lot of movies where men or women kill off an unlikable spouse/partner, often where we are expected to root for the character who does the killing. This film takes an offense that a lot of viewers would sympathize with---infidelity--to get us on the side of the main characters. But this film slowly walks back the “crime” of the offending spouse, until the only thing a victim is guilty of is something the killer imagines might happen in the future. As someone who reads a lot of mysteries in which characters “get what was coming to them”, this gave me some food for thought.
There’s also some interesting undermining of cutesy trappings. I happen to really enjoy Wes Anderson’s style, but think about the stereotypes about his style. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in this film. Smut has a crush on a girl (Natalie Morse), who spends her evenings dressed in a gaudy princess dress, skipping rope, and counting/naming the stars. Smut’s crush on the girl seems like it would merely function as an innocent foil to the corrupted “love” between the Cissie’s and their male partners. But this subplot goes to some really dark places, including several moments of Smut committing acts of self-harm centered on his feelings for the young woman. One of the tragedies of the film is that Madgett, Smut’s father, is so distracted by the shenanigans with the Cissies that he’s missing a ton of warning signs regarding the mental and physical wellbeing of his own child.
Madgett is an interesting character, especially when contrasted with his own son. Madgett is in love with all of the Cissies. He continues to help cover for their crimes, hoping for an emotional or sexual connection with one or more of them. It’s a fundamental betrayal of his legal and ethical obligations. As Madgett commits crimes in the hope of favors, Smut attentively documents every death in the county, including roadkill and dead insects.
Now, about those trappings. While it’s true that I mainly enjoyed them for the contrast they created with the dark turns of the plot, there is plenty of pleasure to be taken in them as stylistic elements. The most obvious one is the numbers. As per the title, the numbers 1 through 100 appear in the film in various ways, through the film. It becomes a gruesome “I Spy” game as half of you watches a murder while the other half scans the frame for an elusive 72. There are also a litany of touches like imaginary games that the characters play--I’d never have the nerve to play Reverse Strip Jump, both because of the heights and the nudity, but Dawn Card Castles seems cool---or the odd design and decor of Smut and Madgett’s respective bedrooms.
Outside of the quirky stuff, the film also contains some excellent visuals. This film has that kind of look that’s both lavish and sort of grimy? The opening sequence with the bathtubs and the apples really exemplifies this. Probably the highlight of the film’s visuals is the final sequence between Cissie and Bellamy. Shot mainly from inside the water and from the side, we watch the characters in profile, their conversation above water a contrast to the actions of their bodies below the surface. Additionally, you know that I always have to give props to a film that shows equity in its use of nudity and gaze. I really like the style of nudity that you get in this film, where it is casual or incidental, fitting with the sexual intimacy between the characters and showing how something as intimate as being naked around another person can swing from feeling powerful to powerless based on the reaction of that person.
I had no complaints about this film. It’s been on my to-see list for something like 20 years, and it did not disappoint. My main experience with Greenaway’s films was when I was in my late teens/early 20s, and watching this film makes me very interested in revisiting those movies.