FOUR STORMS & TWO BABIES

A woman, restless for some meaningful experience in the search for love, meets a man in search of sex. They both take a chance of finding what they want and sleep together in a thunderstorm. The man falls in love; the woman falls for the sex.  The woman meets a second man and is intrigued. They sleep together in a second thunderstorm, and, knowing perhaps now how to do it, she falls in love; he falls for the sex.   A familiar eternal emotional triangle has developed.  In the presence of the woman, the men meet, quarrel and fight.
The woman makes an uneasy peace between them. Through her the men become intrigued in one another.  The woman knows she has a choice to make. Take love but not give it. Give love but not take it.

She takes a chance to find love a second time. On her suggestion, all three sleep together in a third thunderstorm. The men are mutually attracted. They seek sex and maybe love with one another. The woman retreats, persuaded to drop out of the emotional triangle. After the night of three-way sex, the woman discovers she is pregnant and decides to have the baby. She is not interested to know which of the two men is the father. The two potential fathers are invited to the birth of twins, two boys. The two men become fathers without knowing who is the father – two babies for two fathers. As a fourth thunderstorm approaches, the woman leaves for a distant country, still restless for some meaningful experience, leaving the babies with their fathers.

Peter Greenaway (b. 1942), born in Newport, Wales, and based in Amsterdam and London, is one of the great film directors of our time***, an innovative curator, and a challenging philosopher of cinema. Considered to be an avant-gardist who has made forays into mainstream cinema, Peter Greenaway’s unique visual language reveals a strong influence from his training as a painter, as well as structural linguistics and philosophy. Openly critical of the Hollywood approach to filmmaking, he believes that cinema should offer much more beyond the confines of narrative.As a believer in the subversive power of the image, Greenaway expresses his critical reaction to our contemporary visual culture in different forms, ranging from paintings and films, to television, multimedia formats, opera, and, most recently, VJ-ing. His constant exploration of the cinematic medium has resulted in the creation of incredibly rich imagery, heavily influenced by Renaissance painting and architecture, that explores the limits of provocative eroticism, sexual pleasure, and death.

***The Falls (1980)• The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) •  A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) • The Belly of an Architect (1987) • Drowning by Numbers (1988) • The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) • Prospero’s Books (1991) • The Baby of Mâcon (1993) • The Pillow Book (1996) • 8½ Women (1999) • The Tulse Luper Suitcases, (2003) • Nightwatching (2007) • Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012) • Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015) • Walking to Paris (upcoming)