A Zed and Two Noughts

"Immensely entertaining. Wickedly funny" - New Musical Express.

A car collides with a swan outside Rotterdam Zoo. Two women passengers die and the driver, Alba Bewick, has to have her leg amputated. Obsessed with the accident, the husbands of the dead women - Siamese twins Oswald and Oliver - embark on an affair with Alba and soon begin experimenting with the time-lapse aesthetics of decay.

A Zed and Two Noughts is a visceral and cerebral treat, as dead animals decompose to the jokey rhythms of Michael Nyman, symmetry is elevated beyond obsession, and Sacha Vierny's cinematography pays homage to Vermeer. Full of surprises and magnificent conundrums, Greenaway's third feature is as perversely comic and teasing as it is shocking.

UK, Netherlands | English | 1985 | 115 min | HD