This is an excellent post, cheers.
In Danté's work there is noone 'in charge' of Purgatory (certainly no deity; God is the only deity in Christianity!). In fact I don't think it's right to say the film is modelled after The Divine Comedy, but rather just generally modelled after Christian dogma.
You could possibly make a case for Richard being Virgil - guiding Georgina through the two worlds of Hell and Purgatory, protecting her and showing her the way to go, but not following her into Heaven. I'd be wary of that suggestion though, as it smacks of over-analysis.
---
I found it interesting that Richard is practically the only character in the film that Spica never attacks, despite his fairly arrogant and disdainful manner towards the mob boss. At the same time, he never tries to stop Spica's rampages. It's as if the two of them know and appreciate each other's nature: Richard the creator and Spica the destroyer, and won't/can't interfere. They balance each other and it could be argued, until the end, that they need each other.
I'm starting to wonder if perhaps the film is all about Georgina's self-determination, her... coming of age. Spica and Richard represent two paths she can choose to take, one positive one negative, one embracing art and life and beauty, experimentation and experiencing and enjoying life ( the way she is presented with special dishes, hidden with her lover), while the other represents destruction - particularly on a psychological scale - giving in, degradation, violence, abandoning self-respect and her identity (the way she takes her abuse, the way she fails to escape). Spica and Richard don't fear each other because they can't hurt each other (do they ever even touch?) - it has to be Georgina who takes that step, who claims her fate.
You could, of course, overlay a religious theme onto this - Georgina shunning the Devil, turning away from Evil and embracing salvation in the kitchen/church, with her affair a (fairly strange) metaphor for religious awakening.
---
Another interesting way of seeing the film (suggested by Helen Mirren) is that it's about ecology and consumerism. That ties in well with the idea of the kitchen as a representation of Nature, with Richard as creator-in-chief.
You might say that in the kitchen, flora/fauna is the most important thing, the focus, with humans devoted to making the most of it's beauty. In the dining room, man is very clearly in charge and nature reduced to merely food, an incidental to be abused and manipulated. Spica, a grotesque caricature of man's gluttony, becomes more and more obscene until he reaches the logical extreme ending - man consuming man, self-destruction.
An eco-warning, if you like.
reply
share
el_diablo2003
16 years ago
Thanks for this, what a great and thought provoking post. I very much like the latter reading of the film, can't wait to see it again now.
It's interesting that you posit Richard as the alternative to Spica rather than Michael. As I recall, Spica mocks Georgina's demonstrations of her independence through her experimentation with high fashion and haute cuisine, but he lives with it. It seems like it's Michael's intellectualism and cosmopolitanism that really pushes him over the edge. Another way to look at it is that Richard seems world-weary and resigned to the status quo, using his art to subvert Spica and to give Georgina fleeting moments of pleasure. Michael, on the other hand, is an idealist who opens Georgina's eyes to the possibility of a new life and tries to remove her from Spica's realm entirely.
I suspect that the main struggle between Spica and Michael is that (beyond the obvious - that he's having sex with Georgina) Michael can't be commoditized the way Richard can. Though books are a commodity, Michael lives to read, not write. He is not productive, has no money, and he's ok with it.
But I digress. Still wondering about Richard and his celibacy. I'm not buying him as an angel. If anything, perhaps a priest.
reply
share