Peter Greenaway. The mere name brings images of rich grandeur, lush visuals and artistic cinemagraphics. No one, and I mean NO ONE, makes films like Greenaway. His stories, too, like his contemporary visionaries Almodovar and the late Darek Jarman, are drenched with nudity and sexuality. It's the cinema of the distanced erotic.

Greenaway's latest film takes on one of the most outrageous and exciting plots imaginable. Yet this may well be the most straightforward and accessible Greenaway film to date. Still, it's unique, unusual and graphic. It tackles at least one taboo subject, if not numerous more, in surprising and interesting ways.

Greenaway's film transverses the globe between Asia and Europe. His film is sweltering in images of staunch Asian women and erotic European beauties. The "8 1/2 Women" of the title are put together by a very wealthy father and son after the matriarch of the family dies. Wallowing in grief, self-pity, and boredom, the familial pair first express their confusion and loneliness sexually with one and other, in a surprisingly believable sequence, before adding females to the mixture.

Greenaway just takes the film to weird and engaging places with his story. A lot goes on here. And consistently, he plays with eroticism, gender identity, taboo and bizarre realities. I defy anyone to find a sexual topic not at least mentioned in the film. Incest, beastiality, lesbianism, transvestitism, S&M, bondage, and more are prevalent. There is even a toying with sexuality involving the maimed and disabled. And necrophilia is, at least, very subliminally broached. It's amazing where Greenaway goes. And more importantly, how easily and believably he goes there.

Finding ample opportunities to show nudity, Greenaway strips away convention and modern morality to present a film that is both prurient and thoughtful, scandalous and sincere. It's truly an amazing work.

And visually, the film is as stunning as anything we've seen from Greenaway in the past. His austere interiors, his pop and brilliant Asian images, his look at the classic beauty of the human form. Every frame is a marvelous photograph. Greenaway's images envelope you. You are drawn in to the film due to it's rich luster. It's grandiose vastness.

"8 1/2 Women" isn't for everyone. But for all of us who have liked Greenaway's work without ever being able to understand his plots, we finally have a film we can latch on to. And for the uninitiated, it's the definitive starting point.

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