The Baby of Mâcon (1993)

	Directed by: Peter Greenaway	COUNTRY UK/France/Germany/ Belgium/Netherlands GENRE Historical drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Barnet fra Macon RUNNING TIME 122 minutes
	Produced by: Kees Kasander
	Written by: Peter Greenaway

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
The Daughter	Julia Ormond
The Bishop’s Son	Ralph Fiennes
The Bishop	Philip Stone	½
Cosimo Medici	Jonathan Lacey
The Father Confessor	Don Henderson	-
Mother Superior	Ceila Gregory	-
The Baby of Mâcon	Nils Dorando	-

Review

This visual, narrative and moral spectacle from Peter Greenaway wants to challenge and perhaps also provoke you. It is formally and intellectually playful, though the playfulness is rarely apparent in what is unfolding on screen, which has a peculiar sterility to it despite the director's predilection for nudity, gore and theatricality. The film boasts outstanding compositions and costumes, with Greenaway using his colour palette and sets shrewdly. In staging the film at the interface between a morality play and a historical drama of religious mass upheaval, he gives himself an enviable artistic freedom to roam, even if he in the end mostly utilises it to display his carnal interests. The Baby of Mâcon is a fascinating piece, although it never manages to transcend its own metaphorical level. The daring, committed performances of Julia Ormond and Ralph Fiennes give the story some nerve and humanity in the midst of Greenaway's flight of fancy.