Drowning by Numbers

“Three Women And A Coroner.”

In a 1988 English countryside, three women share the name Cissie Colpitts: a grandmother (Joan Plowright), her daughter (Juliet Stevenson) and her granddaughter (Joely Richardson). Each one drowns a husband she has grown tired of, and each asks the local coroner, Henry Madgett (Bernard Hill), for help. Peter Greenaway sets it among numbered games, and Madgett, who has long loved the eldest Cissie, keeps signing the papers while his conscience wears thin.