Guusje van Tilborgh in A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)
Clips
Pics
Review
British director Peter Greenaway is known for creating complex, dense films that may be difficult to comprehend but always deliver satisfying conflict, controversy and carnality. Greenaway’s reputation for exquisite transgression was well-established by the release of A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), the story of twin brothers whose wives are killed in a single car crash. The twins are both employed by the local zoo, which gives them access to dead animals. In the form of self-prescribed grief therapy, the brothers use time-lapse photography to fixate upon the process of decay after death. They also embrace the continuity of life, both of them sexing up the local zoo prostitute and contributing to the pregnancy of the one-legged woman who had been driving the car their wives died in. Once the one-legged woman loses her second leg, and also gives birth to twins, the expectations raised by Greenaway’s name being above a movie title are fully met.