Thanks for the memories!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

This is a black comedy-drama film set in Southwold, Suffolk. It stars Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson as three middle-class women (who ridiculously all have exactly the same name) from the same family. Each woman murders her husband, then tries to persuade the coroner to help them get away with it.This pointless, weird, miserable, boring film is very hard work to watch. The numbers 1 to 100 appear in the film - almost all of them are in order, but a few aren't. Some of them are very difficult to find. It takes great concentration to find them all - but they are of no relevance.It's preposterous that these educated killers would think that they could get away with their crimes in a tiny town. None of the characters are likable. The coroner's son is the worst to watch and listen to. He's a very annoying kid who proudly drones on and on about various strange games - as though what he's saying is really important. He - and the film - give the impression that they're old, traditional, rural English pursuits that many people frequently play. However, most of them are either invented for the film or are obscure. None of them have anything to do with the main plot.This film is a waste of the acting talent of its three actresses. It doesn't work as a black comedy, because it isn't funny. It doesn't work as a drama, because it's too ridiculous to take seriously. What point is there to this film - other than to make the ludicrous claim that death is just around the corner in this tiny, prosperous town?

This is a very irrational and difficult movie to follow. When I first saw it on a large theater screen, the nudity and sex kept my attention. But most of all, the vibrant colors in the film were very prominent in the screen version. Sadly, that is not the case in the video tape version I watched recently. I could not find it on DVD.So I used the nudity and sex to keep my attention while I tried to detach from it at the same time and be objective. That helped me find the deeper story. And although this is a very irrational story, the characters display very normal behaviour in that they continue to repeat their same folly over and over. The men are all playing trivial games with each other and with the women in their lives. In order to get them to break out of their banality, the women try their best to get them to wake up.When they collaborate with the main male character, who is a coroner, the three main females try to use logic to justify their actions. But he just doesn't catch on. He uses the women and their circumstances to gain sexual favors from them. He, like the murdered men he buries, seems oblivious to what these females are trying to bring to him.In order to get a sense of what this story is about, it helped me to use some symbolism. In the title, "drowning" represents the belief that one is imprisoned or suppressed. All the males in the film drown. The other symbol I looked at was "swimming" which is the desire to be accepted or loved. All three female main characters are strong swimmers and all have the same name.In the end, you can moralize about the actions of the women, but that is not what this story is about. If you look objectively at the behaviour of the men, they are caught up in their lack of belief in themselves. So they waste time trivializing their lives. This lack of responsibility on the part of the men affects not only them but their families and the whole community.The women are so tired of not getting love and strength from the men in their lives that they are willing to risk their own futures by murdering those men. Not a very rational choice, but very poignant one. One almost has to laugh at the men who just don't seem to get it.

Such an obviously non-American film. I believe this was the first time I had seen Joan Plowright, and she was so good. Having seen more of her work since, I know this is no fluke. Everyone else was also good here, especially Joely Richardson and Bernard Hill. I won't go into any detail, but the movie is weird, weird, weird, and has a dark subject matter without being a dark film. Highly recommended for those looking for something different. Grade: A

Despite the misanthropy, this is the only Peter Greenaway movie that I actually enjoyed. (Admittedly, this may have something to do with the ratio of female to male genitalia in this film as compared to some of Greenaway's others.) The bit with the numbers is original and clever. It's all sensuously and beautifully shot. Joely Richardson is really quite attractive here. The games are sort of neat.