Drowning by Numbers
- sombre
- measured
- surreal
- bleak
- signature
Sombre, measured, measured drama / art, surreal in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →Cissie Colpitts drowns her cheating husband and, in the ensuing cover-up, enlists the help of lonely coroner Henry Madgett, an old friend with a longstanding weakness for her charms. But when Cissie's daughter and granddaughter—both also named Cissie Colpitts—decide to resort to the same methods for solving conflicts with their own frustrating husbands, the women and their repeated appeals for help begin to wear on Madgett's conscience.
Our read · Drowning by Numbers (1988) reads as a sombre, measured, surreal drama · art · experimental entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
More info & search links
The shape of Drowning by Numbers
What watching it is actually like.
“You want a puzzle-box Greenaway fairy tale where counting games hide dark marital comedy.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if rigid art-film structure and slow repetition will lose you tonight.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself