Restoration

By RICHARD CORLISS

THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT Directed and Written by Peter Greenaway

Imagine that, buried in a forgotten carrel at the back of the British Museum, a hitherto unknown comedy by the 17th century playwright William Congreve had been discovered. Fancy further that his comedy was put not on the stage but on film, with every world-weary epigram and convoluted conceit intact. Such a notion must have occurred to the English experimental film maker Peter Greenaway. With The Draughtsman's Contract, which he wrote and directed two years ago, he has restored the Restoration sensibility. Here is a comedy-mystery laced with Triple Sec humor and stately, raunchy characters who are bound, by their social and sexual pretensions, to find an ordained place in society's elegantly constricting design.

The draftsman, Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), has been commissioned by wily Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) and her daughter Mrs. Talmann (Anne Louise Lambert) to execute a dozen architectural drawings of their estate. When not sharing their carnal favors, he is producing sketches that are precise, refined and troubling--for in them are tantalizing visual hints of a murder, perhaps of the master of the house. Will the draftsman's malefic ingenuity prevail over his hostesses' aristocratic arrogance?

Toward the end, Greenaway's cunning conundrum of a plot unravels a bit. But by then he has made his point about the social power of the artist (whether Michelangelo or Mailer) in a society that wants him as an entertainment but not an equal. That Greenaway made this icily sumptuous film on a $500,000 budget, and seduced winning performances from his cast, suggests that, in art if not in life, the entertainer can exact his sweet revenge.

--By Richard Corliss This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.