The Pillow Book

[KLAXXON]

A woman who as a child had a birthday message written on her face by a calligrapher, searches for a lover who will use her body to write on.

The Pillow Book is writer and director Peter Greenaway's latest work — a mesmerizing and richly developed drama about East and West, past and present, word and image, fact and fiction. On each birthday during her childhood in Kyoto, Nagiko's calligrapher father paints a creative greeting on her face. Later in the day, her aunt reads to her from The Pillow Book written by a female courtier in the Japanese Imperial Court one thousand years earlier. The little girl starts keeping her own diary (pillow book). She also discovers that her father is being forced to have sex with his publisher in exchange for money and publication.

At 18 Nagiko (Vivian Wu) marries but soon leaves her husband. In Hong Kong she finds lovers who will paint her body in exchange for sex. Jerome (Ewan McGregor), an English translator, gives her the idea of taking charge of her own life by switching roles and writing calligraphy on men's bodies. After finding out that Jerome is the lover of the publisher who humiliated her father, she starts a series of 13 erotic poems delivered to her enemy on men's nude bodies.

Those familiar with Peter Greenaway's other films (The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning By Numbers, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover) will recognize the same interest in the link between sex and power and a fascination with a complex narrative line. The Pillow Book manages to carry on his tradition of cherishing both the exotic and the erotic.

The Pillow Book is a Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers, Prospero's Books) mesmerizing visual experience that touches base with spiritual and erotic themes.

Calligraphy is one subject that few movies have used as a theme; but, Greenaway, true to his reputation as a filmmaker with an outrageous streak in him, continues to make outlandish films that have a certain perversity. Here he starts off filming in black-and-white the childhood experiences of Nagiko (Wu), who wonderously listens to the stories being read by her aunt (Yoshida) from a 1,000-year text based on the work of Sei Shonagon, a courtesan. This spellbinding journal of sayings on the subjects of the flesh and literature, makes up "The Pillow Book." The idea of that book is that the texts of those two subjects (sex & art) should fuse together as one, with there being no difference between literature and beauty in their union. Pillow Book is an individual's diary of observations and a presentment of an interesting list of things the diarist jots down.

Nagiko's father (Ogata), whom she idolizes, is a master calligrapher who paints her face with characters to celebrate her birthdays. He tells her: "If God approved of his creation, he will bring the clay model he created to life by signing his name to it." This seems to tickle the little girl's fancy so much so that when we next see her as a young woman in Technicolor, we realize that she has developed a fetish for having her skin written on -- equating her lovers with how good a calligrapher they are.

After marrying in a traditional Japanese ceremony to someone she knows cannot please her who is forced on her through an arranged marriage by her father's publisher (Yoshi Oida), she will leave this husband whom she cannot relate with and move to Hong Kong. Once there she will take odd-jobs, until becoming a fashion model and then a writer on flesh. She will not communicate with her father from abroad after witnessing her father's boss, the publisher, force her father to have anal sex with him, which he does in order to have his books published.

The film concentrates on Nagiko having her lovers write over her nude body, but she is becoming increasingly frustrated in finding the lover who is the perfect combination of lover and calligrapher. Nagiko will meet a young English translator she falls for even though she considers him a scribbler, Jerome (Ewan). To solve her dilemma of being with someone who is not a calligrapher, she writes on Jerome's skin after he offers her his body.

Jerome crushes Nagiko's spirit by having a homosexual relationship with the same publisher who destroyed her husband financially, blackmailed her father, and now has soiled the one she loves. Nagiko thought that she could use him to get vengeance on the publisher but when he goes naked before the publisher and the publisher reads The Book of a Lover that she wrote on him, this act makes her jealousy rage and she spurns Jerome.

The plot turns surprising simple as revenge becomes the motive for Nagiko, and this offbeat film will remain interesting mostly through its striking visualizations.

The stunning visualizations range from ones of comedy to ones of sensuality to ones of gross cruelty. An example of comedy would be in The Third Book of Impotence. The male model Nagiko has written her book on is running naked through the crowded streets of Hong Kong.

By writing her own pillow book, that will include thirteen editions, Nagiko will tell her life story. The last one is called The Book of the Dead, and is an example of how pitiless is her retribution.

The fun is in the silliness of the story's subject matter as juxtaposed against the solemnity of the books being written on skin. In the background there are either somber religious chants or the same pop tune being played over and over. The repeating of the childhood story, the constant flashbacks to Nagiko's childhood, where she is repeatedly told that the diary being read to her is by a woman who has the same name she has, gives the film a stylish depth and a feeling that something overwhelming is happening.

Greenaway tells a seductive tale by utilizing Nagiko's predilection for body art to flesh out her character. She is really the only one in the film that we see developing. Her seventh book, The Book of a Seducer, was very similar to a Confucius book. She writes on a man's bald head, "An itch to read, a scratch to understand." Her ninth, The Book of Secrets, she has her words written on a man's tongue. There seems to be a determined effort to be witty, even if the humor is not scaled to what the story is saying.

The result is a startling film with gorgeous photogenic shots, superimpositions, amazing computer graphics, a splash of intriguing gold and red color patterns, but with everything ending up so perverse and lost in a melodramatic intimacy that even the scenes that do mean something still seem to be too absurd to really mean much. But the film did have plenty of fire, hatred, passion, jealousy, and mystery. For those who like to see a film that is both unique and unforgettable: this one's pure Greenaway.



Vivian Wu ... Nagiko
Yoshi Oida ... The Publisher
Ken Ogata ... The Father
Hideko Yoshida ... The Aunt / The Maid
Ewan McGregor ... Jerome
Judy Ongg ... The Mother
Ken Mitsuishi ... The Husband
Yutaka Honda ... Hoki
Barbara Lott ... Jerome's Mother
Miwako Kawai ... Young Nagiko
Lynne Langdon ... Jerome's sister (as Lynne Frances Wachendorfer)
Chizuru Ohnishi ... Young Nagiko
Shiho Takamatsu ... Young Nagiko
Aki Ishimaru ... Young Nagiko
Hisashi Hidaka ... Calligrapher


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