Passions Flare in the Pit of ‘Belly’

The advertising line for “The Belly of an Architect” reads: “Obsession, passion, jealousy and rage; Art is the food for madness.” It’s actually a perfect tag line for this inventive, distinctive film.

Directed by the controversial but nonetheless talented Peter Greenaway (“The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover”), “Belly” stars Brian Dennehy as Stourley Kracklite, an American architect setting up an exhibition in Rome.

Kracklite’s obsession with both his work and his failing health (which revolves, you might have guessed, around his belly) drives his wife (Chloe Webb, formerly of TV’s “China Beach” and the film “Sid and Nancy”) into an affair with an Italian social scion.

Though the film at times seems long and drawn out, what Greenaway lacks in brevity, he more than makes up for in originality. The movie is beautifully directed, with a plethora of interesting camera angles and sumptuous visuals of the Italian landscape. Greenaway’s eye as a director lets him focus on interpretation of the story line without pandering to the audience (there’s no “let’s blow up a car here” in this film), which makes this 1991 Hemdale picture sadly somewhat of a rarity.

Greenaways’s brilliance is in knowing how to visually intrigue an audience and involve viewers in his characters, who struggle inelegantly, as we often do. Dennehy is particularly strong as the obsessed and hypochondriacal husband of a young and beautiful wife, whose needs are being starved by his inattention. Webb is quite good as the tangled-up wife, and Lambert Wilson puts in a fine performance as her Roman lover.

Mortality, and how one faces it, is the thematic undercurrent in this sometimes somber film. Don’t expect a happy ending.

“The Belly of an Architect” (1991), written and directed by Peter Greenaway. 119 minutes. Rated R.