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<font size="4"><br>8½ Women</font>
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<br>movie review by Crissa-Jean Chappell</font>
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<p><font size="3" face="Book Antiqua,Century Schoolbook,Times New Roman"><font size="6"><b>P</b></font>eter Greenaway's cerebral, sumptuous movies (which include <i>The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover</i> and <i>Pillow Book</i>) look at cinema as a text -- not to be "read" but visually interpreted outside the word-bound conventions of storytelling. This puts off people who label his formula-driven films "pretentious" and "indulgent." His self-referential sign-posts (recurring words, numbers, and artistic allusions) attract rare creatures who delight in postmodernism for its own sake, like the Brechtian actor who breaks the fourth wall, stepping aside to whisper, "I'm only playing a role. Don't believe anything I say."
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