As the director of the arty likes of The Cook The Thief The Wife & Her Lover, The Pillow Book and Nightwatching, Peter Greenaway isn’t exactly known for his romantic comedies, but that’s the direction he’s heading with 4 Storms and 2 Babies, his new film that has just been announced.
However while described as a rom-com, Variety says that the film is, ‘an unconventional love story about two men and a woman who becomes pregnant after a night of three-way sex with them,’ so it’s not like Greenaway is going completely mainstream. Actually knowing him, he’ll add in some naked people covered in mud and make the sets look halfway between a film and a theatre, just so he doesn’t lose his arty credentials.
The movie is due to shoot in Amsterdam later this year.
However before then he’s got another movie to make, which is more what you’d expect from him. The film is the second in his ‘Dutch Masters’ series (following Nightwatching, which was about Rembrandt). Called Goltzius And The Pelican Company, it’s about Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. He seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. Goltzius promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of the Old Testament Biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic stories for his court.
Sounds like Greenaway’s going to have a busy year!