The Belly of an Architect

The Belly of an Architect (1987) is Peter Greenaway's drama, free to watch online on iFILM. American architect Stourley Kracklite arrives in Rome to mount an exhibition honoring Etienne-Louis Boullée, an 18th-century master he has chased for a decade. Brian Dennehy plays a man whose lifelong dream starts eating him alive.

His younger wife Louisa (Chloe Webb) is pregnant, and Kracklite's mind curdles. Her swelling belly, his suspicion that she's drifting toward a younger Roman, and a gnawing pain beneath his own ribs fuse into one fixed dread. He measures his fading body against Boullée's biography and grows convinced someone is quietly poisoning him.

Greenaway frames Rome like a living engraving — rigid symmetry, marble statues, ochre light, Wim Mertens on the score. This is slow, cold, intensely physical cinema for anyone who loves arthouse built on architecture rather than plot speed. Dennehy gives perhaps the finest dramatic turn of his career. Stream The Belly of an Architect (1987) online on iFILM.