Drowning by Numbers  (1988) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

I was ready to shut this movie off during the opening credits. A young girl skips rope as she names the stars in the cadence of her count to 100. "13 - Rigel, 14 ... " - get it? Now you'd think most filmmakers would pick up this little symbol at a point near its end, but not Peter Greenaway. We see the whole count in real time. I nearly fell asleep before the movie title appeared, thinking it was going to be a Greenaway pretension-fest like Prospero's Books.

I'm glad I didn't give up.

Of course, it never did become a normal movie. This is one weird effort, a Salvador Dali painting come to life, but beneath the madness it is also a charming entertainment. The counting to 100 in the rope-jump prefigures the appearance of the numbers one through a hundred in sequence throughout the movie. It's fun after a while to see if you can spot them or to predict their appearance.

The plot, such as it is, centers around three women with the same name who all drown their husbands, with the assistance of the coroner, an inveterate gamesman who protects the women from the law in return for sexual favors. It's quirky, personal filmmaking, and the main characters are all utterly amoral. I'm assuming they really are three separate women, but that is by no means certain. Maybe they aren't real at all. They are, but they aren't.

Does the plot really matter? It's a black comedy, and a puzzle. "The play's the thing."

Who else but Peter Greenaway could have written the dryly amusing script? Who else but Greenaway could have imagined the ethereal landscape, which was not unlike Prospero's Island in Greenaway's version of The Tempest. The visual presentation is poetic and rich with symbols. One might even say "cluttered with symbols", or just plain "cluttered." The camera angles are unusual, befitting the material photographed.  For my money, nobody creates a richer texture of visual imagery than Greenaway, and his vision is truly unique. You will not mistake this film for the work of any other director.

For me, the only disappointment was an unsatisfying ending. Besides the ones I mentioned, the other main character in the film is the coroner's bizarre number-obsessed son, who narrates, and actually does most of the numbering that marks the progress of the film. The ultimate fate of that boy-narrator seemed unduly harsh to me. Oh, I guess this was how it had to end. I couldn't come up with a better solution to the puzzle, but I just wanted some of the characters to fare better than they did. Still and all, it was Greenaway's game, and that's how he played it.

I'm not sure why anyone financed this film, because the potential audience is small, but I sure liked it. I have seen nine of Greenaway's movies, and this is my favorite.